Tube English 4

The station announcers are fond of telling passengers to move along to the ends of platforms where frequently fewer people are waiting. This is fair enough, at one level, yet one must ponder what would happen if everyone followed this advice. Surely the crush at the end of the platform would seriously inconvenience all, whilst leaving space in the middle carriages. So what they really should be asking is that sufficient passengers move along so as to spread the load out evenly. Rather hard to know how to put this into a short pithy and easily repeatable-through-a-loudhailer phrase though.