Here’s an experience for you:
I’m on a train from Trenton to DC. This travels the same track as my old commute from Trenton to Philadelphia, but after a minute I realized I wasn’t seeing the same things: some marshy areas with nothing but bare trees and a few birds of prey, the backs of a row of mobile homes, an unfamiliar highway; I missed the Levittown station entirely. I genuinely thought maybe Amtrak was using different tracks than the commuter rail.
Then I looked across the aisle, out the left-side window, and everything was familiar again.
There’s a reason for this: The commuter rail to Philadelphia starts out nearly empty at Trenton, and gets full starting at I want to say Cornwells Heights. The trains have two-seaters on the right and three-seaters on the left. The calculus as a commuter is: You’d rather have a seat all to yourself, but if you can’t, you’d rather share a three-seater with one person than a two-seater; but you’d rather be the second person in a two-seater than the third in a three-seater. So if you’re going all the way, the reasoning goes: Better to grab a three-seater, because you’ll get a partner sooner but you’ll keep your elbow room for longer, because the middle seats in the three-seaters are the last to fill.
And so you always sit on the left. And you don’t get the view on the right until you take the Amtrak to DC.
This is the first time I’ve traveled on my own since the pandemic began. I forgot how much I enjoy train trips up and down the East Coast. Trenton to Boston’s a bit more fun because of all the little seaside towns in Connecticut and Massachusetts, but Wilmington and Baltimore aren’t so bad either. Definitely not my usual side of the aisle.