M-7 seating article in Newsday

See today's (Tuesday, April 6) Newsday http://www.newsday.com for two page article about M-7 seating.

I saw that, and quite interesting article. Last week, I got loads of pics of them, and added them to my site including one interior pic.

Good artice... I agree with it.

Unfortunately, most commuters will never be satisfied. Perception, it would seem, is everything.

I concur. The M-7's are an improvement overall but there is no way you can make all of us New Yorkers happy, it is impossible. Someone will always have a problem no matter what....

I posed this question in the old forum and strangely enough got ZERO response. But Ill ask it again....

How many of the regular people who post on here are actually commuters, that take the train twice a day to and from the city ?

I would suspect way less than half the people in these forums. Toug I realize this is a "railfan" site and your average commuter probably doesnt even know this exists. So the opinions are probably skewed. However I can say without pause that the M-7 leave alot to be desired in the seating area. They flat out suck to tell you the truth.

you could pick people up at their front door, give them a free ride to the station, let them ride for free, give them free Starbucks and Krispy Kreme's a free NY Times, and there would still be complaints.

So I'll jot it down that "badneighbor" falls in the "less than 50%" category of non commuters.

While nowhere near a regular commuter from people in my family who are allI hear about are complaints about the M-7's seats being too narrow they tell me that when they wait for the train in the morning they hope for old equipment and cringe when they see a set of M-7's approaching. While they feel they are an improvement overall the seating took a serious step back.

Teledelux,

I usually end up on an M-7 at least once a day and I think that the seats - at least the two-seater - are a lot narrower than the M-1/3's. Unless I'm sitting next to a very small person, if I'm in the aisle seat of the two-seater, my side is crushed by the armrest. I'm 5'11" 185lbs.[/u]

I couldnt agree more with you. I pray for the old trains, I hate the new ones only for that reason.
Im 5'9" about 180lbs myself by no means a space eater and there is no room at all.

TeleDelux wrote:How many of the regular people who post on here are actually commuters, that take the train twice a day to and from the city ?

I am.

I never noticed all the so-called bad things about M7s until I started reading about them. I was always so happy to have heat, quiet and constantly-lit lights that the swaying & smaller seats never crossed my mind. I can think of only one time where I was squashed, on the window seat of a two, but the guy next to me was a real porker and would have squashed me in the old cars too. About the only time the M7s bug me is when I'm next to a chatterbox who yaps the entire ride on their cell phone or to a co-chatterbox. You could always count on the profound rattling of the M1/M3 to mask these undesirable vocal noises quite nicely.

<i>Starbucks and Krispy Kreme's a free NY Times, and there would still be complaints.</i>

Yeah, I hate coffee, KK's are way overated, and the NY Times is generally so far off the off the deep end to the left, it's worth reading more for comic value than as a real paper.

Teledelux,
You make an excellent point, however the priority list of the LIRR goes something like this; political football, polical patronage, jobs program....comuters...................railfan. You should start a comuter forum, it's good therapy...

I would but there aren't enough commuters on here.

I would still like to know who else who regularly posts in here commutes back and forth 5 days a week like me ?

I'm a railfan who just happens to be in the rat race 5 days a week. By no means to I claim to know much about the technical aspect of things disgussed on here but I love to learn from reading....but I do know that whoever had the final say in the seating arrangements for the M7 did not ride them to and fro everyday.