As you wait for a train in a station, please watch around your steps carefully. Then you'll find some position marks for boarding.
In Tōkyū Tōyoko Line there are usually three marks where the door comes. It means that you should wait in a line behind one of these marks: left, middle, and right.
This is a quite usual manner and everyone who uses a train should know it; however, these position marks are positioned a little perplexingly, so passengers cannot wait in lines behind each mark.
When a train arrives, waiting passengers must make enough space in front of the door, so they move aside to let the passengers get off. At the time the train arrives, the left line can move to the left side of the door, and the right line also can move to the right side. Now, where should the middle line move to let passengers get off? It's obvious that the middle line will bump or interrupt them. So the middle line must also move somewhere, but both left and right are already full. Then the passengers waiting in the middle line have to apologetically squeeze into the left or right line, and some skipped passengers who had waited in the left or right line must not be happy.
There's something wonderful at Shibuya Station -- the terminal. There is a platform at either side. All the passengers first get off through the doors on one side, so in contrast the people waiting opposite don't have to make enough space in front of the door (or close up instead). However, the passengers still assume that it makes no sense to wait in a line behind the middle mark. But the train is empty and nobody must come out, so the middle line cannot interrupt anybody, and more, the head of the middle line can get into the train earliest.
A lot of passengers still don't like the obscure position, and don't try to wait in a line in the middle position. (I always try to follow in the middle, of course.) So the position marks had better show which side of the door the lines should move. In Nakameguro Station there are two marks on the left side and two marks on the right, which also have arrows. And Akihabara and Ōmiya have particular position signs. They are not marks but routes which show passengers like this: "Passengers will get out and go in this way, so follow in this route strictly and then enter this door." I don't know whether it's necessary to signify so politely.
If it comes your turn to wait in a line behind one of several marks and to be at the head of the line, which mark do you choose?
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Soliloquy of my Railway © Satoshi Oshio, 2004
