Cramped Seating on Buses

Australians are apparently getting physically bigger:

Obese Aussies get big ambulances

So why do bus seats seem to get smaller and more cramped?

On my bus trip home tonight I made the mistake of sitting on one of the face-to-face seats. The bus became rather packed, and someone had to sit directly opposite me. We had to place our legs in uncomfortable positions to avoid knocking each other's knees.

It's not just the face-to-face seats that are cramped. Other seating configurations cause different types of cramping. For example, seats over wheel arches require passengers to raise their knees (on the window side), or have one leg higher than the other (in the aisle side). And the seats behind the barriers near the exits allow barely enough room for your feet. Those with long legs and big feet can try sitting sideways, but that's difficult if the bus is packed and you have to share the seat.

The larger bags and other accessories that people carry around with them just makes things worse.

We should be trying to get as many as people as possible to leave their cars at home and use public transport. But making the seats uncomfortable is not the way to do it.

PS: To rub salt into the wound, another bus came past a few minutes later and was practically empty! Maybe the bus I caught was running late, and so was taking on additional passengers. If the buses ran on time, I probably wouldn't have had to feel like a sardine. Buses not following schedules is a topic for another rant :)