SINGAPORE - The Land Transport Authority (LTA) has installed new reserved seat designs in the Downtown Line 1(DTL1) trains to encourage commuters to give up their seats to others who may need them more than they do.
The reserved seat designs are one of three new initiatives for the DTL1 to improve the commuting experience. Other initiatives include adding new queue lines and playing ambient music at the stations.
All three ideas came from commuters in a study of more than 1,000 commuters conducted by LTA and the Singapore Kindness Movement between Feb and July 2013.
LTA also invited commuters to vote for their favourite seat design via SMS and Facebook. A total of 2,168 votes were cast during the 6-week voting period, with the most popular design receiving about 33 per cent of the votes.
Ms Tammie Loke, Group Director, Corporate Communications said: "We were pleasantly surprised to see how evenly distributed the voting was, telling us the voters like all four designs. In fact, many commuters said they would like all four designs to be installed. And so we are happy to use all four designs."
Based on a straw poll conducted in Feb 2014, eight in ten felt that the new designs were effective in reminding commuters to give up their seats.
All four designs will be installed in existing DTL trains by end March 2014, and in future DTL trains.
LTA will also continue to monitor the effectiveness of the new reserved seats designs, as well as the other two initiatives on DTL1 for a year, before deciding if they should be introduced to other MRT lines.