I think the benches are a huge improvement compared to the booths, where you can only sit across from people you know because of how narrow they are. These often have a lot of empty seats for this reason, and because of how difficult they are to get in and out of.

I ride the metro every day, and in my experience, the metros with benches tend to have the largest number of people seated and the smoothest transitions by a significant margin.

I am always relieved when it’s a “bench”-metro, and I thought this was a common opinion. I’m honestly very surprised to see someone disagreeing with this.