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Swiss Industrial Design Firm Creates Transforming Train Seating for Bike Storage

Erfindergeist shows us their "inventive spirit"

By Rain Noe - January 17

in Bikes | Social Impact

The Swiss Southeast Railway (Südostbahn, or SOB) does not have a problem with punctuality; Swiss trains run like clockwork, as they say. And with reliability solved, the organization can turn their attention towards refining other aspects of the user experience. "SOB wants to make trains more flexible for customers to use in the future," the organization writes. They looked for a problem to solve, and found the following:

"More and more bicycles are being transported on trains. This poses challenges for rail companies: They want to provide customers with enough bicycle and luggage space, but space requirements change depending on the time of day, day of the week or season. 'The trains always offer the same range of seats and parking spaces at any time of day or night, in any weather,' says Urs Brütsch, Head of Mobility at Südostbahn."

SOB turned to industrial design consultancy Erfindergeist ("Inventive Spirit") for a solution. After studying the problem, Erfindergeist industrial designer Christian Keller concluded that "the space is there," and that the designers just needed to unlock it. They then designed the following arrangement, in which sets of four passenger seats can be stowed away to make room for bicycles, strollers or luggage:

Interestingly enough, the seats have been designed so that, when folded away, they offer no clue that they are seats—in order to prevent arguments between passengers:

"Unlike folding seats, there is no conflict of use between travelers because the folded seats are no longer recognizable and available to passengers."

'That illusion won't last long, of course, once passengers observe the seats being transformed; but I thought that was a fascinating thing for a design to strive for, particularly in Switzerland, where I don't envision passengers having the same dust-ups you might see on the Long Island Railroad.

The seats were also designed to mount to existing attachment points, avoiding the need for costly refits.

A set of these are currently installed and undergoing a one-year trial in an SOB train.

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Leandro Heck

10 months ago

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How does this work? Suppose I am sitting there, and a guy with a bike comes. Then I will have to allow him to put his bike? Doesn't make any sense to have a convertible seat. There should be places for the bike only otherwise it will always have one or 2 persons sitting there.

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- Ryan Cee
  
  Leandro Heck
  
  10 months ago
  
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  Best option would be to make it crew-access only.
  
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Ryan Cee

10 months ago

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Lot of wasted space in the design if it's only for bikes. You can easily flip one on its back wheel and store it vertically in far less space, and like Leandro mentioned it would make more sense to have a set designated area for that type of storage rather than flipping seats up and down, and potentially displacing passengers.

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