Plan your platform

I promised some more stuff on public transport, and now I'm going to deliver. If you happen to live in Sydney, or maybe another city where public transport is the only option, and yet totally crap, I'm sure you'll relate. If you don't, well I'm sure you can feel smug or sorry for yourself depending on what your options are.

So I'm going to share a secret with you. If you take public transport every day, particularly the train, you can't really afford to leave things to chance. If you want to try to avoid the worst of the crowd, not get stuck in inpenetrable crowds of people trying to get through exit gates, and actually make it to work on time, you have to have a bit of a plan.

Now I'm not going to pretend that it's some finely-tuned secret service black-ops mission-style operation. But I will tell you it's as closest as you can get without having a license to kill. So every morning I walk down to the platform. I've invested in the annual ticket (after careful deliberations and extensive calculations) and therefore won't have to worry about buying tickets for some time. Nonetheless, there is much planning, negotiation and impeccable execution required.

So I walk down. I head to the right of the platform, approximately 15-18 metres from the bottom of the stairs. When the train arrives, there is a bit of an element of judgment involved, as the doors might not line up exactly with where I need to end up. Once on the train, having chosen the optimum door, my strategy is usually to go against the flow. Once all the seats are full, most people (amatuers - ha!) tend to stick around the standing room at the end of each carriage. I, on the other hand, pretty much always tend to head up or down into the seated areas and stand in the aisle. There is motive behind my actions. The reasons for doing this are as follows:
There's generally more standing room there than crammed in the cattle class. I like personal space and I'm perfectly aware that I'm towards the end of the line and therefore the train is generally pretty full by the time I get on.

As soon as someone gets off the train, I'm in perfect position to steal their seat. Anyone down the stairs would have to a)spot a spare seat. and b) get all the way up there past me!
Quite a lot of people get off at Redfern (usually changing to other lines, not because they want to be there). A lot of people get off at Central. A really lot of people get off at Town Hall. I get off at Wynyard. I get a seat more often than the odds would indicate is likely.

So there you go. Inside the mind of a planning, scheming commuter!

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that I tend to end up with a seat. Plus, thanks to the devious scheming and positioning at the start of the line, I generally end up with the doors opening right at the stairway. That means I don't end up behind the lovely old duck in the walking frame. And I hit the gates first and save myself about 10 minutes in crowd negotiation.

So for all of you out there who thought the whole public transport thing was left to chance, hope you’ve had an education!