It's always possible that there's been a new directive within the railways, but I've had a few guards recently make announcements telling people to keep the vestibule clear & allow other people to get on. Although this sounds obvious to the seasoned commuter (like yours truly), it isn't so obvious to people from "elsewhere" - out of town & other countries. It's also not so obvious to children, who may have been brought up in a cotton-wool home where the child is the centre of the universe. This latter scenario distresses me somewhat.
Back to non-commuters. When you board private transport, you open a door, sit down, relax & get taken directly to where you need to go - unless you're the driver doing the taking, in which case I hope there's less relaxing. On public transport, going through the door is not the end of the story - you have to find a seat or at least get out of the doorway to allow others to come in after you. If you're not in the habit of doing so, then this might be a revelation!
At the other end of the attitude from the public transport newbie is the person who is so relaxed with their daily commute that they've forgotten how public the transport is - they sit on the steps if there are no other seats, fall asleep on their neighbour, or expand to fill all of the space left as the train empties. They are "at home" publicly.
There's a third class of people on public transport - staff.
I don't see them all that often - you get the odd ticket inspector every few weeks, police (mostly on stations), but that's it. However, the other day I jumped onto a train with four staff who may have been ticket inspectors, but they weren't doing any inspecting - they didn't have their equipment out.
What they did have, though, is attitude. They thought they were entitled to do as they pleased. By that I mean that they stood around in the vestibule, stopping me from getting in, then continued to stand around in the doorways. I thought it quite odd, but then realised that it's exactly in line with the whole private/public dichotomy.
They own the railways - they're private members. The trains belong to them. That kind of entitlement makes it private transport to them. They are the self-appointed lords of the manor, usually in the same vein as the officious clerks who screen their fellow plebeians for the aristocracy.
Self-appointed transport vigilantes are actually no different. Everyone is told "if you see something, say something", or words to that effect - take responsibility. However, this doesn't include escalating a situation unnecessarily.
One day, I heard a guard directly tell some "children" (without seeing them, I don't know how old) to stop mucking about in the vestibule (aren't cameras wonderful?). Sitting within my view, however, were some "young men" (who looked like children to me, but had facial hair) commenting how they'd happily "sort out" said miscreants if necessary.
Perhaps what is needed is transport segregation - a carriage full of vestibules for those who like to hang around & block doorways, a carriage with little compartments for those who like to feel as if they're on their own, a carriage with glass dividers where people could complain about other passengers without anyone else having to listen to them.
