Very glad to see that you and Paul agree on how bad gallery cars are. They were OK when they were new but really outdated now 70 years later. Noisy, like a moving cell block. Now that Metra is moving toward eliminating paper tickets, collectors become less necessary.
BTW, at least in Germany, regional and intercity trains still have human conductors, not platform validation. That's on S-Bahns and U-Bahns with very random inspections and steep penalties for riding "black."
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Paul MilenkovicGallery bilevels, which I believe were unique to Chicago and the San Francisco "Peninsula" commuter trains, are really pretty awful. I think they are a labor-saving measure in that the conductor can "pull tickets" from both the main floor and the gallery without climbing stairs and making another pass of the train car. I have been on both, and those Bombardier bilevels are much better for passengers. The closest comparison might be those seats on the newer 737 and Airbus 321 jets that are straight out of the movie The Matrix. The seatback in front of you is just inches from your face, only it has a touch-screen TV to keep your mind somewhere else besides the misery of the seating arrangement. Just like those new mass-transportation jets make the regional jets seem comfortable in comparison, a gallery car does the same for a school bus.
My view on the Gallery Cars.....
Freaking cold in the winter because almost the entire interior is exposed steel. Sure they crank up the hot air in the winter time in an attempt to compensate and that does it for some folks but not for me. The gallery cars were designed by the private railroads because they wanted to collect every penny they could on their commutter service.
Now that public transit agencies have taken over the ticket collecting conductor should be largely eliminated. I am actually surprised Amtrak uses them so heavily still. Validate the tickets on the platform before the train is borded like the Europeans do. Then have a conductor spot check through the train. That in my view is much more efficient and you'll save more money from elimination of ticket collection labor than you will lose from people who skip on paying the fare. Especially if the fine is steep if caught skipping on the fare. Amtraks new LD ticket collection is such that if your on a sleeping car they no longer really need to scan your ticket once your on board all they need to do is ask the car attendent now if you have boarded and manually confirm via their hand held scanner.....which is a nice improvement......Amtrak does not always do that but I have been on some Texas Eagle trips where they asked to scan the ticket and others where the conductor just conversed with the car attendent and the car attendent checked all the tickets when folks boarded to make sure they matched. Not having to be bothered for a ticket scan is nice. I suspect they can only do that with sleeping car reservations though.
So in the new era of ticket collection the Bombardier cars are nicer and for that matter so are the Siemens Bi-Level Commuter Cars. Hopefully ticketing will increasingly be more and more electronic and they will have tap scanners soon at the vestibule doors, where you just tap your credit card and it acknowledges the charge for the rail fare.
Gallery bilevels, which I believe were unique to Chicago and the San Francisco "Peninsula" commuter trains, are really pretty awful. I think they are a labor-saving measure in that the conductor can "pull tickets" from both the main floor and the gallery without climbing stairs and making another pass of the train car. I have been on both, and those Bombardier bilevels are much better for passengers.
The closest comparison might be those seats on the newer 737 and Airbus 321 jets that are straight out of the movie The Matrix. The seatback in front of you is just inches from your face, only it has a touch-screen TV to keep your mind somewhere else besides the misery of the seating arrangement.
Just like those new mass-transportation jets make the regional jets seem comfortable in comparison, a gallery car does the same for a school bus.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
because if they did there survey would actulay work...tried this at least 8 times and it keeps rejecting me...https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CR9KVM8
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