Seating in public places and transport

Does anyone think that seating in public environments could be designed better. I was thinking that perhaps there are a few issues with some of the common trends in this area. I have been travelling a lot recently, waiting in public spaces like airports and stations and using a lot of busses and trains and so on. The thing I have been noticing is that people often do not sit optimally for the best health of the crowd, that is to say, people often sit to to isolate them selves using a certain method, i.e. not sitting next to people if possible. There are of course other factors that are seen in some of the mentioned areas, like the availability of power, the fact that groups often move together, and the fact that some of the noted environments involve distinct changes in use statistics. 

Sooo. I thought about a few of these things and though a way to make busses or train a little nicer would be to make less wall oriented seating and more floating seating that would still let people walk around and would let people either be close to or less close to people around them depending on their acquaintance with each other and without taking up too much extra space. 

Also, I thought a little bit about steps to socially engineer people sitting in airport gates and other such places to make sure they would use the available chairs optimally, or at least in the sense that clusters and isolated individuals could exit without wasting seats or making either group less happy. 

I will try to put some sketchup models together to show what I am thinking about. Any other ideas?