New perch seat on sentosa express monorail:
Not new. Hitachi has designed the interior of the train to fit
in as many passengers as possible. Since their Small Monorail
project is designed to fit in a maximum amount of passengers while
retaining it's purpose as a short train serving a small urban area,
folded seats are the way to go.
Anyway, these aren't perch seats because it's not actually meant
for people to use it as a bumrest. The seats are designed to be
folded up since the start if you haven't noticed the hinges and the
curvaceous shape of the seat bottom and seat back matching each
other. Just that they may have added an orange seat cap thingy on
top.
Btw, this is a standard practice in Japan. On the Yamanote Line
(there may be more lines) during peak hours, seats are folded up
and after about 9am or so, an announcement will be made to tell
passengers to pull down their seats after the driver has unlocked
them. This is a much better innovation than to have permament "bar
trains" with some seats sticking out and suddenly a missing gap.
There is supposed to be a pull down gap similar to ones you can
find on metal cabinets but I think the orange seat cap thingy is
blocking the view of it.
