Commitments, evidence and design advice
A tram is somewhere people spend twenty minutes of their day in the company of their neighbours. The federation has undertaken social commitments and has measured what its seating arrangements do.
The commitment
Loneliness has been rising among the youngest residents for about fifteen years. The user assemblies raised it first, the sub-regional councils took it up, and the federation assembly accepted a share of the work in 2021. The causes are many and they are specific to this country. Explanations borrowed from capitalist societies, where people are cut off by insecure work, housing nobody can afford and the loss of public space, describe conditions the Republic does not have.
The federation's decisions bear on social contact in one respect. Podnik decides what the inside of a vehicle looks like, how long a person waits at a stop, and whether a journey can be shared.
The undertaking is recorded in the rules. The factories design for company, the operating cooperatives keep waiting times inside the range below, and the federation measures the effect and publishes it. The 2021 resolution obliges the assembly to check the promise every three years against evidence.
Reliability
The size of the fleet exists to hold this range.
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Ten minutes is the working range
A gap of up to ten minutes on a town service passes without comment and doesn't disturb any arrangement. The operating cooperatives are held to that figure by their user assemblies, and the position feed publishes every departure transparently.
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Exactness is a smaller matter
A vehicle running three minutes off its time is accepted here. The federation has declined the second-by-second standard that some networks abroad hold to, on the ground that the precision costs staff pressure the cooperatives decline to impose.
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Outages
An hour with nothing running takes the evening away from everyone who planned around it, and a route that does that twice in a month loses riders who then stop arranging to meet at all. The reserve fleet exists to prevent that failure.
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People plan around the network
People arrange to meet because they expect a vehicle to come. Every hour of unexplained absence undermines a little of that assumption, and it is slow and expensive to rebuild.
Two words
The terms are borrowed and the federation uses them in their ordinary sense.
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Sociopetal
Arrangements that draw people together
Facing pairs, four-seat groupings, side benches facing each other across the aisle, and the open standing zone where people end up in a loose circle. A person seated this way can hold a conversation without turning their body.
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Sociofugal
Arrangements that hold people apart
Forward-facing rows, seats backing on to seats, single seats against a window, and standing space facing a screen or a door. A person seated this way can travel a whole line without meeting anyone's eye.
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Both belong in a vehicle
Wanting to be left alone on a journey is fair, and a rider who has spent a shift among people has a right to a seat where nobody looks at them. A design offering only one of the two fails a part of its passengers on every trip.
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Capacity favours sociofugal layouts
Sociofugal layouts hold more people in the same floor area, which is why the metro cars and the busiest articulated buses are laid out that way. The federation accepts this on the lines where the passenger numbers require it.
The experiment
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Two groups, defined by where people sat
The control group was riders sitting in sociofugal spaces, together with riders boarding models laid out sociofugally throughout. The test group was riders in sociopetal spaces and models.
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Fourteen sub-regions, twelve months
March 2024 to February 2025, across trams, town buses, coaches and regional trains. 9,640 residents answered at least once, 4,780 in the control group and 4,860 in the test group.
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Asked at the end of the journey, and again later
The first questions were put as riders left the vehicle. Everyone reporting any contact was asked again at six months to find out whether anything had lasted.
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Published whole
The questions, the raw returns with names removed, and the working of every figure below are published with the annual report. Anyone may put a question about the method and receive a reasoned answer.
Findings
| Measure | Sociofugal | Sociopetal | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Satisfaction with the journey, mean of five | 3.6 | 4.1 | +0.5 |
| Spoke with someone they did not know | 9 % | 27 % | +18 |
| Exchanged a name or a way to meet again | 3 % | 8 % | +5 |
| Contact still standing at six months | 1.2 % | 2.1 % | +0.9 |
| Would choose the same layout again | 74 % | 81 % | +7 |
| Felt watched or looked at | 6 % | 19 % | +13 |
| Left a seat to move elsewhere in the vehicle | 4 % | 11 % | +7 |
The last two rows are the cost of the first five. About one rider in five in a sociopetal space disliked being in view, and one in nine moved away from it.
Qualifications
The effect on lasting connection is small. A rise from 1.2 per cent to 2.1 per cent means that roughly nine journeys in a thousand ended in something still standing half a year later.
People choose their seats. Riders who want company are more likely to sit in a sociopetal space, so part of the difference between the groups reflects who sat where. The model-level comparison, which removes the choice by comparing whole vehicles, gives a smaller gap on every measure.
The discomfort is reported, and some groups report it more. The riders who reported feeling watched were mostly young women, people travelling alone late in the evening, and riders who had said they have a disability. The federation treats a layout that makes those groups uncomfortable as a fault in the layout.
Nothing here was measured against the causes. The survey compares two seating arrangements. It says nothing about why loneliness among the youngest has risen, and the federation has neither the skill nor the standing to investigate it.
Design advice
This is advice only. The factories design their own vehicles and the communes adopt their own fleets.
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Balance the two, with neither predominating
On a town vehicle, hold sociopetal seating between 40 and 60 per cent of the seated capacity. A cabin given wholly to facing seats is too much for the riders who wanted a quiet trip, and a cabin of forward-facing rows offers no opportunity for contact.
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Keep the other kind within reach
Every seat should sit within six metres of a seat of the opposite arrangement, so that a rider who finds themselves uncomfortable can move around without leaving the vehicle.
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Break the run
No more than three facing bays in an unbroken row. A block of sociofugal seating or a standing bay between them gives the eye somewhere to rest and stops the cabin looking like a waiting room.
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Leave room between knees
1,450 mm between the backs of facing seats and 720 mm of clear knee space. Contact that a rider has not chosen is the most common complaint about facing pairs, and the dimension fixes most of it.
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Keep seats for being alone
There should be at least four single seats per vehicle with nothing facing them and a window alongside.
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Doors and high loadings stay sociofugal
Door areas, the space over the wheel arches and the whole layout of the high-capacity metro cars are better left to encourage flow and maximize standing room. Talking at a door helps nobody who is trying to get off.
Where it sits today
| Mode | Sociopetal share | Within the range | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trams | 52 % | Yes | Facing bays over the centre section on every low-floor model |
| Buses | 46 % | Yes | Side benches facing each other ahead of the centre door |
| Coaches | 38 % | Below | Long runs favour forward-facing seats. Under review by the assembly |
| Trains | 58 % | Yes | Four-seat bays around a shelf, the oldest arrangement on the network |
| Metro | 24 % | Exempt | Capacity governs. The M4 carries 198 with 30 seated |
| Ferries | 66 % | Above | Cabin tables. Crossings are long and nobody stands |
| Pods | 74 % | Above | Four to eight seats in one small cabin leaves little choice |
The band is advice only, and the exceptions are published with the reasons for them. Coaches will be brought into the range as the SOL C8 replaces the C4 and C5.
Proposed
The Cortius user assembly has proposed a trial. Small movable bookcases would be fixed at the joint in the middle of the FER T4 and T5, with books free to take and free to leave. The proposal came from riders and reached the federation assembly in May 2026.
The engineering questions are settled. Ferrista has already created a bracket that mounts on the existing floor bolts and comes out in ten minutes for cleaning. Loaded mass is under 30 kg, which changes no axle load in the catalogue. The case sits clear of the aisle width the test station at Vestrano requires.
The open questions remain. Who restocks it, what happens when it is emptied in a week, and whether a shelf of books should be present on lines where people stand. The assembly decides in November 2026, and a trial would run on three Cortius lines for a year with the same reporting as the seating survey.
None of this is claimed as a solution. The federation runs services and decides on the designs. It has committed to doing both in a way that gives people a reasonable chance of company, and to measuring whether that works. The measures are partial, the effects are small, and the causes lie mostly elsewhere.