this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
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The station in the study is modeled after the NYC subways. The platform is dimly lit, filled with virtual litter, with no barrier between the platform and tracks; it is an unsettling environment in its own right.
I wonder how much the environment imfluenced the results. I would imagine a test with a well lit, clean subway station with platform screen doors might lead to different results.
It would be interesting to test different environments.
Looks like the purpose of the study was to find out if people could empathize based on a virtual experience, so the scary vibes made sense. If they were measuring how much fear people experienced in different locations, that'd be a whole other thing.
That said, I've ridden rail transit in cities from Vancouver to London, I've never once seen barriers between the platform and the tracks.
Wait, this was a test 'to see of video games are art'? For fucks sake what century is this?
No?
They are called platform edge doors and they are common in Asia, and rare in Europe or the Americas. They make the platform a much more pleasant place. Full height walls and doors makes the platform be a normal interior space.
If you've travelled that far you have seen those doors. They are included on every automated people mover at airports. Securing the track area is required for driverless operation, so every automated people mover will have them The doors are seen as optional in most subways and light rail so they are often cut from the project.
Makes sense, I've never been to Asia and I was only in Europe for a couple weeks, so the only European airport I saw was Heathrow, where I took the metro.
I'm not disagreeing that it's safer to have a barrier, or saying that barriers aren't a thing, just that it's common enough not to have them to be used to it. I don't think about that danger. I haven't seen a space like that before, no.
I lived in Vancouver for almost a decade, where the trains are driverless and there aren't walls or barriers, even at the airport.
But I did just learn what an automated people mover is, and some of them are adorable.
It's the difference between public transit as a public service vs. public transit as a profit-making venture (in some places) or at least as public service being "run like a business" (more common in the west).
As soon as "business" is uttered in the management of something, you get to cost minimization and life-saving measures tend to cost money. They're thus the first things cut unless forced otherwise by regulation.
Yep. I agree. All I said was that it's common, not that it's correct.
Not always full height, but always high enough you can't easily go over them, yes. I'm actually shocked all the time now when I visit places like Toronto and Ottawa and see how unsafe the subways are.
Oh! Yeah Los Angeles is putting those in at a lot of stations (the entrance, nowhere near platforms, and you need to pay to exit)
Isn't that what the yellow line is for? Where do they have more than this?
Every subway in China. Like literally every one. Even the older ones like Beijing's and Shanghai's have been retrofitted with barriers.
Oh. Places with real transit. Okay.