The Spoonfed Nation

The last time I took the train from New York's Penn Station to Princeton, I asked myself a question I had asked myself many times: Why are passengers not allowed to stand on the train platforms and wait for their train there like in almost all other countries, instead of waiting upstairs and staring incessantly at a monitor until their train platform is announced? This has always really puzzled me. At first, I had thought it could be because of safety concerns, but how could these concerns differ from those of passengers waiting for the subway for example? Then I considered the possibility that it was due to heavy traffic through the station, but would traffic really be heavier than at London's Victoria Station for example? Not so sure. But then I came to another possible explanation that seemed to fit pretty well based on observations from other parts of daily life in the U.S.: they don't want people to wait on the train platforms to prevent passengers from getting on the wrong train. I know it may sound absurd at first, but there is a high likelihood of that happening given how many trains pass through Penn Station in any given span of time. And it is even more likely given how accustomed people here are to having everything spelled out to them. What do I mean exactly?

Well, road signs consist mostly of words (not actual signs like in Europe and most other places): Yield, Right Lane Must Turn Right, etc. Yellow signs alert you to a "Wet Floor". Coffee cup sleeves tell you that you are about to consume "a hot beverage". And peanut packets make sure you know that your snack "contains nuts." I know that such disclaimers and signs exist mostly to prevent litigation, but at the same time, I think they have the somewhat perverse effect of making people more dependent on external actors and less reliant on themselves. People start thinking less for themselves and their basic "survival skills", if I can call them that, are debilitated.

But let's return to Penn Station. As I boarded my train and stared out the window, I noticed that a station employee was standing near the stairs. Then I also noticed that almost every single person who came down the stairs to board the train asked him whether this was Track 3, whether this was the train to Trenton, or whether they should get on on this train or the one on the opposite side of the platform. These might all have been valid questions, except for the fact that a "Track 3" sign hung directly in front of you as you came down the stairs, the side of the train read "Trenton", and the train on the opposite track was dark and had all its doors closed. If no-one had been standing there to direct them, they would have just had to figure it out themselves.

Having observed those few things, I concluded that there is very high probability that people could inadvertently board the wrong train if simply allowed to stand on the train platform at all times, given how little attention they seem to pay to implicit (and sometimes even, explicit) signals. I also concluded that the U.S. is probably the most spoonfed nation in the world, for better or worse.


P.S. The above are obviously just personal assumptions/conclusions. I would love to hear what you think or to have you negate them, especially if you know the official reason for why people are not allowed to wait on the train platforms at most major U.S. train stations. :)