New Hybrid Doors, via sf.streetsblog.com
As a regular rider on SF Muni, all too often I see people confounded by the multitude of door opening mechanisms. Several times a week I see people unfamiliar with the various systems, and either have to watch them struggle, or yell out at the driver to open the door. The familiar chime of “Back door!” should never be this prevalent.
The busses have three different methods of egress, plus the simple use of the front door. The oldest system is the ‘step down’, another chorus you may hear when unfamiliar with that trigger. Seeing as this is rather difficult for elderly or disabled people to do quickly, or if the driver is in a hurry, newer busses feature the press bar. This mechanism works well enough, unless your hands are full. The newest method is the ‘touch here to open’ strip, which is really just an optical sensor. The sensor doesn’t open the door unless you correctly hover your hand in the right place for about a second, which was nothing to do with touching. Clearly tiny signs aren’t very helpful in instructing people how to operate doors.
Muni trains, on the other hand, are at least standardized. The problem here is that the press bar is located well too low to actually be reachable. Half of the people I see simply kick the bar, which can’t be good for maintenance. It’s either that or bend over, and hope that you’ve pressed it in time to activate. If you’re in the rear train, there’s no option of yelling at the driver that you wanted to get out. My personal favorite is when the door is out of order, and they simply apply a barely visible sticker, about 6′-0″ above the floor. How hard is it to put some red tape across a door to show it’s broken? And I would be remiss if I didn’t harp on the piercing squeal the doors make if held ajar. I’m sure everyone recognizes when a door has been held open, so why subject the entire train to that awful sound?
Any one of these mechanisms would be totally fine if they were uniform across the system. Of course this would cost too much to happen in my lifetime. Naturally the best option would to simply open the doors automatically at each stop. With the increasing usage of Translink and monthly passes, we should encourage people to enter through the rear door anyways (of course with more fare enforcement). And if that doesn’t work, try considering a system like Seattle, where you pay while boarding for inbound, and pay upon exiting for outbound stops. Overall it would decrease the dwell time, and help get people smoothly home. Certainly our ears would be all the healthier for it.
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Peter on 01.20.2010
I’ve always thought that most of the confusion over the doors that you have to step down to open could simply be solved with signs on the windows that say “STEP DOWN TO OPEN DOORS”. The only instructions are ABOVE the door, where nobody is going to be looking when they’re trying to get off.
The strips on the new buses are even worse because the instructions are inaccurate and even regular riders don’t seem to know how they actually work. The hand icon on them makes it seem like you’re supposed to press on the door with your full hand, which doesn’t reliably work. It doesn’t help that there’s a delay before the door opens.