Governments can so often appear like grey, amorphous, by-the-bookworms with no imagination or taste visible in their duties, but in designing the new light rail cars for east and southeast London, the city’s transportation department is thinking of making the seats in the front car a children’s make-believe area.
With fake steering wheels, and a suite of buttons which do nothing, Transport for London (TfL) is looking to increase “community engagement” with their new fleet of driverless trains.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said TfL is considering different ways to bring a “driving the train” experience to the new DLR carriages.
“[TfL is] exploring a number of other customer and community engagement activities to support the introduction of new DLR trains,” Mr. Khan said, according to the Weekly Standard. “TfL will review learnings from the front seat ‘driving the train’ vinyl sticker trial in early 2024 before finalizing plans.”
The front seats of the front cars are being changed to two, forward-facing benches, across from control stations that control nothing, and steering wheels that steer nothing.
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“We have made sure we’ve got a front seat on the new DLR trains as well, because I know what a prize that is,” said Khan, after referencing his childhood of always trying to call shotgun, or “bagsies” as it’s called in Britain.
The Docklands Light Rail (DLR) network serves a variety of locations in South London, and can bring passengers to several key transfer areas where they can board the London Tube to wherever it is they are going.
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