The Bow-Tie Bench

This is almost turning into a photo blog. Maybe I should write soon about the movie "The Change-Up," which I saw a week ago. Anyway, these are the benches that SEPTA, in its infinite wisdom, have placed on their platforms at the 8th Street station on the Market-Frankford El:

Why? Why have benches that are bent out of shape like this? Artistic reasons? They look as if they've been grabbed in the center by the Incredible Hulk while he was sitting there and...never mind, we won't go there.

So when it's really crowded on the platform there's not enough seating. You can't sit on about 40 percent of each bench. If anyone knows the point of these things, enlighten me.