To answer the question, it's a mistake. There are no controls on the left side of any subway car, doesn't matter if its a full cab or half cab. One simple reason for that too! All the signals on are the right side of the ROW.
Hi Alan,
In the LA Subway system the controls are on the left-hand side and that's where the driver sits. There are some subways in Europe (could be in other places as well but haven't been everywhere *yet*
) where the controls and the driver sit in the center of the cab.
Also, on the LA metro there are a couple of stations where the platform is on the right-hand side and the driver actually gets up from his seat and moves to the right side where there is a little panel which controls the doors, etc. I've been in several situations where the train actually started moving from the station while the driver was walking back to his seat. (and no, there weren't two persons in the cab, just the driver.) This was back in the day where you could sit in the first car as a passenger and see thru the window into the cab car and actually be able to see the windshield and the tunnel, and pretty much everything that was going on in the cab. A couple of years ago those windows were tinted and you cannot sit in the front row and watch the tunnel...