I have come to understand that the Reserved Seats started out as an initiative to ensure that people in need would have a place to rest on crowded trains. The visual part of the sign, placed above the seats suggests that the seats are reserved for people who are injured, elderly, carrying children or pregnant. Ostensibly, this seems like a noble initiative.

But upon closer inspection, the concept of the Reserved Seats itself is flawed on many levels.

Shame by labels

The idea of having to save seats for some more needy people is firstly patronizing. It is one think thing to promote graciousness, but it is quite another to shove it down people's throats. The seats are unmistakable with large labels printed above them, coercing kindness from people based on guilt. Singapore is a country that has been touted as first-world  in many areas. To carry out an initiative that on principle, works on the guilt of people, is insulting. Have some faith in the people. We are not (all) children who need to be threatened to be gracious. [EDIT]( Someone mentioned to be that on the Downtown Line the Reserved Seats are literally labelled "Be Good".)  I see people giving (non-reserved) seats up to injured, frail-looking people all the time.

The assumption of need

The Reserved Seats area has often become a battleground, making excellent material for the glut of online tabloid journals and STOMP (But STOMP is a topic for another blog post).  A typical argument over the reserved seats pits the "person in need": typically an elderly person or a parent of a child arguing over the right to sit down with a person who is "not in need"--someone who does not fall into one of the categories represented in the visuals I mentioned in my first point. Firstly, children can stand on the train. If you are old enough to run around in the train and jump on a seat, you are well and fully able to stand on a train ride. I don't understand why people offer seat to children on the train.

Secondly, just because someone is elderly doesn't mean they NEED a seat. Firstly, the definition of elderly is debatable. One way to identify an elderly person would be by the way he/she looks i.e. a person who looks elderly. This is of course all subjective. I devote some detail to describing what might appear to be an unnecessary belabouring of my point for a specific reason. How does one know whether to give their seat up to someone if we can all have different ideas of what an old person ( and also a frail or weak person) looks like? Also, does it make sense for such a person who believes himself to be deserving of a seat to be angry if someone sitting on the seat doesn't do so, because he doesn't perceive him to be needy?

Also, why is an old person necessarily more deserving of a seat than a young person?Does it imply that a young person simply cannot be more tired than an elderly person? Of course, at this point you might be thinking that nobody has actually said whatever I've suggested in the two lines above. But you see, the thing is, people actually have said such things. Some elderly people believe they are entitled to such a seat simply because they are "old".  To me, this sense of entitlement is false because someone who is old does not need a seat on the train or a bus more than anyone else. But the question is, is there any way you can actually say this to an "elderly" person without sounding like an uncaring  jerk?

Oh, the Mind Games

So that brings me to my next point, so the Reserved Seats and whether one should or is morally obligated to take a seat or give up their seat to someone has become a mind game we are forced to play on a daily basis. Passengers quietly negotiate within themselves, by taking cues from dirty looks and how close the "person in need" is standing to you ( if you are seated on the offending seat) to determine your next point of action. In the mean time, parents of young children and elderly people are on a moral high-ground--creating a culture of fear at least ( annoyance) among passengers.

Get rid of the seats please
I think if you really want people to have a pleasant journey please get rid of the seats. Stop enabling the false sense of entitlement I spoke about earlier and most of all, stop making me play mind games at 8.30 a.m. in the morning. We all just one to get from point A to B without ending up more tired than we were when we first got on the bus or train. Have some faith that the people of the "first-world" country will have the basic decency to give up their seats to people who TRULY need it--because they have proved on a daily basis that they will. Please, remove the Reserved Seats