Observations of Spain

Random things bother me. Why do smoking sections exist? What's the point of allowing possession of weed when it's illegal to buy. Why do you park on a driveway and drive on a parkway?

Random.

The other day I was riding the subway and noticed this oddity about the Barcelona subway trains. Tell me if you notice the same thing I did.

You notice something missing? Still don't quite see it? Let us compare the above photo to photos of other countries' trains.

Germany

Japan

New York

Give up. The Barcelona subway train is missing a horizontal bar that people can hold on to. The horizontal bar  distributes people so that people can stand in front of the seats and still have something to hold on to. 

That red line represents what should be there. So what happens when that bar is not there?

People crowd around the areas where there's a vertical pole. These poles are found right next to the doors. By transitive property this means that all the people crowd around the doors. WHY? Every other country has figured out that maybe it would be best to distribute the people throughout the train so that the area by the door is not crowded. 

The Spanish have decided that no, this is actually a horrible idea and that the best way to have people ride the train is to concentrate them in the areas by the doors because that is the only area where they can hold onto something. Oh and by the way if you think it wasn't the Spanish that decided this. It was. The manufacturer of the Barcelona metro trains is CAF of Spain. Yes, very smart Spaniards. Very smart.