The thing about the window seat
Last week I travelled from London to Amsterdam via Brussels on one of the new Eurostar trains, which have in fact been around since November 2015, but not being such a frequent traveller, it still defintely felt new to me. The e320 Eurostar trains are designed to be more energy and space efficient, and also include upgrades to the onboard passenger experience by way of USB charging sockets and free wi-fi (though I couldn't get it to work). However, the overall onboard experience incapsulated by the new interior design by Italian firm Pininfarina, has received mixed reviews - and I wonder if parts of the interior makeover also hint at an emerging advertising revenue model for Eurostar, also being seen in across other modes of transport.
During my standard-class ride onboard the e320, it became obvious that Eurostar interiors seem to have been re-modelled according to the design standards of ubiquitous aeroplane interiors, effacing all previous reference to the continental design of their first generation interiors which borrowed form the luxurious French TGVs. They are now engieneered to accommodate the maximum number of passengers and homogonous standard issue 'hand' luggage wheelie suitcases.
Gone are the cosy little connecting areas of each carriage which also served as the entrance area when you stepped onboard, with two thoughtfully placed little flip down seats just where you might need them if you weren't able to get to your seat immediately in the rush to board, or your prefered to stay closer to your outsized or precious luggage. These areas have now been rationally reconfigured, stripped clear to provide more space to host the over-supply of cuboid wheelie cases.
Even the colour way of the seating seems to be a disturbingly unfortunate reference to budget airlines: the faux leather navy blue upholstery and flash of high-gloss bright yellow plastic for the hand grip are not disimilar to the new Ryanair air plane interiors (opps).
The audiable experience of the interior even sounded cheap and tinny - for the last half hour as the the buffet cart was being closed down in the adjacent area of our carriage, I was party to the cafe staff's apparently loud conversations whilst emptying the bins and cashing up. Compared to the first generation trains which felt altogether more robust and reassuring, in my experience the new interiors seem to have downgraded the overall customer experience form one of french elegance to homogonised efficency - quel dommage!
However, the thing that persisted to confussed me throughout the three-hour journey to Brussels was the LCD screen mounted on the partion wall a couple metres away that was continually displaying advertising rather than useful travel information. When I got up to go to the toilet I realised that there were other more informative screens mounted on the ceiling, but I couldn't help feeling a little iritated by the incesant animation of the minature billboard positioned perfectly in front of me at eye level. It was somehow more annoying than a printed advertising poster you might find on the old Eurostar trains, more akin to the constant audio bombardments you get on a Ryanair flight. Perhaps my intollerance was due to the amount of money I had paid for my ticket, but transactions aside, the constant flickering of the attention-seeking screen detracted rather than enhanced the atmosphere.
Fortunately however, I was also sitting in the window seat, possibly my favorite thing about travelling by train - eperiencing the world form the ever so slightly elevated perspective at high speed never fails to captivate me. I wrote about it in a blog post ten years ago - thank goodness for the window seat! Thinking about the window seat a few thousand feet higher up in an airplane, (although less convient for calls of nature), it is too definitely a perk: that truly bird's eye view on the world, the closest many of us will get to seeing the Earth form space, with just a few millimetres of acrylic and glass seperating us from obilivion, is a privillaged thrill.
Flicking back to the persistent advertising onoard the new Eurostar carriage, there are deeper, more complex reasons as to why its presence might be a disturbing sign. David Roberts, writing for Vox about the business models currently evolving for autonomous vehicles, explains that a potentially undesirable path for advertising as a key revenue stream is already emerging.
He descirbed a potential reliance on onboard advertising revenue model as a nightmare scenario for self-driving cars of the future. My recent Eurostar experience has made me wonder if other tranportation could also be tempted to venture down this route, where they become the platform that provides a litterally captive audience for advertising, in the same way that Facebook has evolved today.
Looking to the future of train travel, Elon Musk would love the next generation network to be played out through his Hyperloop system which would see the implementation of virtual augmented windows, as passenger pods get sucked through enclosed vaccum tubes at ultra-high speeds. This could provide the perfect opportunity to raise revenue from advertising, reducing ticket prices and allowing the expanision of the Hyperloop platform.
So the thing about the window seat is that sadly it it's years may be numbered in the pursuit for ever more economically efficient transport of humans. And to bring it back to the topic of this blog, my closing thought is that perhaps uniquely the physical engagement required to cycle will inherently perserve the authentic, ad-free window seat experince from the saddle of a bicycle.
During my standard-class ride onboard the e320, it became obvious that Eurostar interiors seem to have been re-modelled according to the design standards of ubiquitous aeroplane interiors, effacing all previous reference to the continental design of their first generation interiors which borrowed form the luxurious French TGVs. They are now engieneered to accommodate the maximum number of passengers and homogonous standard issue 'hand' luggage wheelie suitcases.
Gone are the cosy little connecting areas of each carriage which also served as the entrance area when you stepped onboard, with two thoughtfully placed little flip down seats just where you might need them if you weren't able to get to your seat immediately in the rush to board, or your prefered to stay closer to your outsized or precious luggage. These areas have now been rationally reconfigured, stripped clear to provide more space to host the over-supply of cuboid wheelie cases.
Even the colour way of the seating seems to be a disturbingly unfortunate reference to budget airlines: the faux leather navy blue upholstery and flash of high-gloss bright yellow plastic for the hand grip are not disimilar to the new Ryanair air plane interiors (opps).
The audiable experience of the interior even sounded cheap and tinny - for the last half hour as the the buffet cart was being closed down in the adjacent area of our carriage, I was party to the cafe staff's apparently loud conversations whilst emptying the bins and cashing up. Compared to the first generation trains which felt altogether more robust and reassuring, in my experience the new interiors seem to have downgraded the overall customer experience form one of french elegance to homogonised efficency - quel dommage!
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| New Eurostar train interiors |
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| Ryanair airplane interiors |
However, the thing that persisted to confussed me throughout the three-hour journey to Brussels was the LCD screen mounted on the partion wall a couple metres away that was continually displaying advertising rather than useful travel information. When I got up to go to the toilet I realised that there were other more informative screens mounted on the ceiling, but I couldn't help feeling a little iritated by the incesant animation of the minature billboard positioned perfectly in front of me at eye level. It was somehow more annoying than a printed advertising poster you might find on the old Eurostar trains, more akin to the constant audio bombardments you get on a Ryanair flight. Perhaps my intollerance was due to the amount of money I had paid for my ticket, but transactions aside, the constant flickering of the attention-seeking screen detracted rather than enhanced the atmosphere.
Fortunately however, I was also sitting in the window seat, possibly my favorite thing about travelling by train - eperiencing the world form the ever so slightly elevated perspective at high speed never fails to captivate me. I wrote about it in a blog post ten years ago - thank goodness for the window seat! Thinking about the window seat a few thousand feet higher up in an airplane, (although less convient for calls of nature), it is too definitely a perk: that truly bird's eye view on the world, the closest many of us will get to seeing the Earth form space, with just a few millimetres of acrylic and glass seperating us from obilivion, is a privillaged thrill.
 |
| image: @beckymiller33 |
He descirbed a potential reliance on onboard advertising revenue model as a nightmare scenario for self-driving cars of the future. My recent Eurostar experience has made me wonder if other tranportation could also be tempted to venture down this route, where they become the platform that provides a litterally captive audience for advertising, in the same way that Facebook has evolved today.
Looking to the future of train travel, Elon Musk would love the next generation network to be played out through his Hyperloop system which would see the implementation of virtual augmented windows, as passenger pods get sucked through enclosed vaccum tubes at ultra-high speeds. This could provide the perfect opportunity to raise revenue from advertising, reducing ticket prices and allowing the expanision of the Hyperloop platform.
So the thing about the window seat is that sadly it it's years may be numbered in the pursuit for ever more economically efficient transport of humans. And to bring it back to the topic of this blog, my closing thought is that perhaps uniquely the physical engagement required to cycle will inherently perserve the authentic, ad-free window seat experince from the saddle of a bicycle.
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