
In the 1970s, NYC Dabbled in Carpeted Subway Trains - Hooke
https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/1970s-nyc-tested-state-art-subway-car-carpeted-floors
======
Reason077
All London Underground lines have cushioned, upholstered seats. You can even
tell which line you’re on because each line has a unique fabric pattern known
as a “moquette”:

[https://londonist.com/london/transport/all-the-tube-
moquette...](https://londonist.com/london/transport/all-the-tube-moquette-
patterns-bitchily-critiqued)

(The fabric does wear out eventually, but it seems relatively cheap and easy
to replace. It’s rare to see a dirty or overly worn out seat)

Commuter trains into London often have carpeted floors, too, depending on the
operator and type of train. It does make for a quieter, more civilised
experience!

~~~
meddlepal
The Red Line in Boston has fabric seats too... they're great for soaking up
homeless people's piss.

~~~
Reason077
The question you need to ask is, why are Boston's homeless urinating on Subway
trains? Why don't they piss on the street like Londoners do?

~~~
etblg
Gets cold in winter

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vortico
In my personal ideal world, this would be a great idea! Passengers on best
behavior, no food/drink, no being drunk/high on the train, obviously no
urination/defecation except in restrooms, etc. And if you do make a mess, be
responsible by paying for the cleaning. But of course many people are far from
my ideal, so we can't have things like this.

~~~
nucleardog
Ah yes, after years of trying to convince drunk people to stop getting in
their cars and driving home let's now kick them off of public transit.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
In truth, drunk people need to be at home and not in public. Public
drunkenness is the violation, compounded by driving. Adding public transit is
not at all unreasonable.

Nobody has the 'right' to be a slobbering mess-making drunk in public. At all.

~~~
nucleardog
Yes,

Ignoring that trying to convince the entirety of society to never drink again
at social gatherings (even in your "drunk at home" ideal unless people
exclusively drink alone and never at _other_ people's homes they will still
need a way to get home) is a complete non-starter based on the last 9,000-odd
years of human society and interaction.

Ignoring that removing all public consumption of alcohol from bars,
restaurants, sports events, and basically everywhere else would have a huge
knock-on effects for all sorts of areas of the economy.

Ignoring that many people are able to drink the 2-3 beer that makes it illegal
for them to drive without becoming a "slobbering mess-making drunk".

Ignoring all the thousand other anti-social things people do on transit and in
public that makes life miserable most places.

Your idea makes sense and will solve your annoyance without thousands of
people dying every year.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Strawman. Jumping straight from 'don't be a slobbering drunk in public' to
'never drink again at social gatherings' is the usual alcoholic response to
any suggestion that they may be doing anything wrong.

It's disingenuous to attack me - after all the 'public drunkenness' violation
was voted into law, and not just by me personally.

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massysett
This is around the time the Washington DC Metro launched and they launched
with carpeted cars. They stuck with carpets for decades and only in the past
few years with the newest cars did they go to hard floors. The old carpets
would get nasty and they would replace them with new carpets of a different
color, leading to a sickly blend of 1970s brown seats and 2000s grey or red
carpet.

~~~
empath75
A lot of trains still have carpeted floors in dc.

~~~
timdiggerm
Yes, but it's less than half the active rolling stock. 538 vs 648 of the 7000
series, and and there are still 100 more 7000 series cars yet to arrive, which
will lead to more retirement of the older cars. Once the 8000 series starts
arriving in 2024, the end of carpeted trains (which will by then be...I dunno,
less than a third of the cars?) will be very near.

Numbers:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro_rolling_stock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro_rolling_stock)

~~~
timdiggerm
Update: They have actually received all of the 7000 series cars, and it's 60%
of the fleet.

[https://wamu.org/story/20/02/27/metro-just-received-the-
last...](https://wamu.org/story/20/02/27/metro-just-received-the-last-of-
its-7000-series-rail-cars/)

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chriscatoya
Unimaginable as this may be, there are trains in Japan sporting green velour
seating and wood(?) paneling. They are pristine and glorious-- a far cry from
the hard plastics and vinyl we've come accustomed elsewhere to see as
appropriate for public transit.

~~~
chrisseaton
I think most trains around the world have carpet - just city subways are the
exception.

~~~
T3OU-736
Curious thing:

Living vicariously through images - the regional rail around New York City,
known as Metro North Railroad, uses what appears to be pretty thick vinyl on
its trains, whereas CalTrans in Southern California uses cloth.

Wonder why a given material was chosen.

~~~
Gravityloss
It never rains in Southern California?

~~~
chrisseaton
London uses cloth and it rains a lot there. These trains have roofs.

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nkozyra
Obviously this was a general trend at the time; honestly, once you've taken up
a seemingly spotless carpet once you'll never want to own carpeting again.

The transit museum in Brooklyn is really eye opening for this; on the bottom
floor you can walk through trains going back to the start of the private
Subway system(s).

There have been a lot of mystifying design decisions through the years. The
earliest ones had wicker, leather and wood and seem more spacious than today's
trains.

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SauciestGNU
This is why dogfooding is important. Any designer who thought upholstered
surfaces in a public transit railcar was a good idea was someone who probably
didn't regularly use public transit. On the other hand, you have to appreciate
the designers for trying to improve the public transportation experience for
the users. There seems to be very little innovation in passenger compartment
design, and it might be fruitful to explore new designs.

------
ThePadawan
> "The interior sound level of a SOAC train is as quiet as the interior of a
> modern office building"

Well - we managed to make the interior of office buildings louder by an order
of magnitude since then...

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foobarbecue
DC metro has always had carpet. I think they're getting rid of it these days.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/the...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/the-
story-behind-the-carpeting-in-metros-railcars-it-
stinks/2018/02/08/33d24974-0b92-11e8-95a5-c396801049ef_story.html)

~~~
i_am_proteus
The newest cars aren't carpeted, but the WMATA is still maintaining the
food/beverage ban.

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randomcarbloke
London tube has carpeted seats, and while they do wear the experience is
perfectly nice.

The iconic patterns are even available as merch:

[https://www.ltmuseumshop.co.uk/](https://www.ltmuseumshop.co.uk/)

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Mountain_Skies
MARTA in Atlanta had carpeted subway cars for decades. We all celebrated when
the last one of those cars were taken out of service in favor of hard surface
flooring. The carpet absorbed urine so it always smelled that way in all of
the cars. Summers, which are hot, humid, and lasts for nine months, were
especially bad. MARTA also had padded seats in the early years but they were
replaced after a couple of years due to the high vandalism rates. You can see
what MARTA trains looked like when new if you watch the deleted scenes from
'Escape from New York' on YouTube.

~~~
mc32
It’s also probably much easier to hose things down when the surface is not
hydrophilic nor do you have to wait as long for it to dry off.

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nkrisc
The Chicago El cars have a hard floor with channels that run lengthwise down
the car that conveniently channel urine through the entire length of the car
down the center aisle. Probably makes it easier to hose it out the back of the
car later on.

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ivix
The trains serving London are carpeted, and it's not an issue.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Possibly the underground is used by a wider range of classes.

I bumped into John Bercow (Speaker) last year getting off the tube at
Westminster not sure senior Politicians ride the subway to work.

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tacass
BART, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit had cushioned, cloth covered
seats and carpet for decades until only a few years ago.

~~~
Optimal_Persona
Yeah, that was really gross. On the brighter side - random liquids got
absorbed in place, rather than flowing all around the floor like they do now
;-). I suspect someone at BART is a vintage guitar buff, the grillecloth over
ceiling speaker panels looks like it's from a '50s or '60s Fender tube guitar
amp.

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daveslash
To be quite honest, carpeted _anything_ (other than a living room) makes me
think of the Enterprise in _Star Trek: The Next Generation_.

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wycy
The Washington, DC metro still has many cars with carpets. They're pretty
disgusting, but probably not quite as disgusting as you might think.

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rafaele
I was hoping to read about that classic 70s shag carpet.

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shadowprofile77
This is such a laughably, obviously bad idea that it's hard to credit it to
anyone who's taken so much as a single subway ride. Even for modern NYC but
especially for 1970's NYC.... I mean, damn...

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morsch
It's striking how something that's mundane in many parts of the world -- I'm
talking Europe here, not just in stereotypically civilized Japan -- is
considered by many to be a laughably bad idea in NYC. Maybe you should
consider getting to the root causes that prevent you from having such
extravagant luxuries...

~~~
beepboopbeep
The root cause is a city filled with disparate cultures. Where as other have a
strict adherence to their native norms, our native norm is that we don't have
native norms beyond surviving. The city is transient by nature, by the hour
even with a commuting population of something like 8 million people.

So...what's easier to change? Culture, or carpet?

~~~
morsch
Sure. Multiculturalism and the melting pot is the root cause. Not
homelessness, drug addiction, income disparity, access to (mental) health
care.

