Those yellow arrow stickers on metro platforms are back, now with stronger adhesive. The STM is restarting its pilot project (same designs, same platforms) to try and organize the chaos of metro boarding by clearing a path for those getting off.
Not getting the idea
Unfortunately education isn’t quite sinking in yet for everyone.
I’ve never actually seen those markers except on your blog, but they defeat their own purpose, don’t they?
I mean the fact that most people didn’t yet realize that it’s easy to see where the doors open because of the worn pattern on the floor is the reason why boarding is quite civilized most of the time. People line up all along the boarding plateforme, and when the doors open, most of the people are already on the side of the doors, letting people out.
There’s more than one thing wrong with the stm’s logistics, but metro car boarding had never struck me as one. Except for the few odd cases that no sign or rule will affect anyways, I find people to be very civilized and polite on the subway. Try to get on the bus in Paris… our nice waiting lines that sometimes strech for half a block don’t seem to exist over there. It’s more like Black Friday at Long Island’s Wal-Mart.
The STM sure has balls. They think that a few stickers on the platform will suddenly civilize a society so stuck in their own heads. The “me first” attitude has been growing stronger from one generation to the next. The blame should land squarely on the shoulders of the parents of all Metro users and not only this generation, but generations past. How simple is it to teach your children to move over to let people out, how simple is it to get up off your seat and let someone who needs it sit down, how simple is it to get up and be prepared to get off the train before you arrive at your stop instead of stampeding people ahead of you because you are in a rush all of sudden. These are simple, easy normal well brought up human beings should be able to follow. The STM should not have to dictate how not to be a savage and if your parents have not taught you how to be civilized then they have failed you.
Years ago, I commuted along with another cow-orker, and our commute included a transfer at Berri-de-Montigny. We purposefully chose to sit in a car near the exit, so the platform was always jam-packed with people eager to teleport themselves through us so they could grab empty seats.
This is where the fun began because there is no nicer feeling than 400 pounds (we were both slimmer then) of meat plowing into the inrushing inflow fat, shoving them aside with profuse and polite “excuse me”, knowing very well that they would not come back against us, so eager they are at catching their trains… (Once, a diminutive old woman kept rushing against me, mumbling something or other. So, irked at her persistance, I just stood in front of her, preventing her from entering until the doors closed. As the train left, I very politely told her that it was not polite to rush in like that against people and she should wait for the way to be clear. That’s at this moment I noticed the two laughing STM security guards laughing at her…)
Aaaah, the exuberance of youth…
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WRT lines and boarding buses in Paris, the bus-waiting lines painted on the floor at Terminus Centre-Ville are a sight to behold. A friend of mine working in the AMT told me of french-from-France interns working at the AMT for a summer being totally flabberghasted at the sight of those lines, and realizing that the people would actually queue on them… Such orderly queueing is a concept totally alien to parisians, it seems…
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Now, if only the STM would tackle the problem of people standing on the LEFT side of escalators… (official reason not to: “it would de-balance the escalators”. Now tell that to an engineer and see how he laughs you out of this continuum)…
Actually the official reason not to have walking on escalators is safety. There’s no regulation against it, but they’re not encouraging it either.
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