• Subtracty@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    30th St Station in Philly, and I’m sure many other train stations in the world, has a similar layout with stairs down to the tracks. And has benches along the railing. The benches don’t obstruct the movement of people going up or down the stairs, but start from the top of the stairs and sit along the unused space to the sides of the stairs. The line to show tickets forms to one side of the stairs so that while passengers leaving the train can go up the stairs on their right the passengers joing can go down on their right. If you are early to your train, you can sit right there in the front of the line on a comfortable bench, and the line can form behind you.

    • Copernican@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      The layout is different in philly. Train stairs are on the sides of the main hall, not in the center of it. The center of the main hall is clear of seats to allow traffic to come through. The design of moynihan puts the stairs to the tracks in the middle of the hall, not the sides of the hall. So the seating options are put near the side to allow more flow of traffic in the center of the hall. I’m also pretty sure this is also a result of modern anti-terrorism design to be easier for security as well. Seating exists for waiting. At Moynihan they don’t really announce what track your train will be on until like 5 or 10 minutes before boarding starts. So there’s not really a way to know where to wait for ‘your’ train even if benches were next to the tracks.

      Also, 30th St Station in philly has less than half the annual amtrak ridership as Moynihan, but roughly the same size building.