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London's Elizabeth Line's disjointed introduction
On Wed, 13 Dec 2017 09:17:48 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote: In message , at 08:15:01 on Wed, 13 Dec 2017, Neil Williams remarked: If the objective is to please people getting off the Victoria Line at Euston, and walking to the MML platforms from there, rather than getting off the Victoria Line at Kings Cross for the MML platforms, then I think we can discount them as a target audience of any relevance at all. Not everyone is arriving at St Pancras from the Victoria Line. Other methods of transport are available. You can't please all of them; you take from one and give to another. The vas majority have to walk "further" to get to the MML platforms. Victoria Line passengers are simply the ones most disadvantaged. Only a handful of people approaching from the NNW (through a side door) won't. If there was indeed some kind of "balancing" of need taking place, it wouldn't be so bad. But there isn't. TfL's facilities known as Kings Cross/St Pancras station are a convoluted horrible mess of which TfL should be thoroughly ashamed. Even though the station is advertised as "step free", anyone with walking difficulties would have a hard time negotiating the distances underground. OTOH, above ground, the NR Kings Cross improvements, undertaken during the period when Network Rail was private, are a magnificent blending of old and new to create a very pleasant and functional station. The contrast could not be more stark. |
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London's Elizabeth Line's disjointed introduction
In message , at 11:15:18 on
Thu, 14 Dec 2017, e27002 aurora remarked: TfL's facilities known as Kings Cross/St Pancras station are a convoluted horrible mess of which TfL should be thoroughly ashamed. Even though the station is advertised as "step free", anyone with walking difficulties would have a hard time negotiating the distances underground. I don't think the "step free" facilities are intended for people who can't walk very far (I've helped such folks negotiate several stations including Kings Cross) but are to tick a box that says "wheelchair friendly". And as a side effect "pram the size of an SUV friendly". It doesn't mean that such acts of friendliness should be deprecated, but sometimes they could be much better done. Actually, the lift down to the Northern Line platforms is in the classic ticket hall, and could hardly be more convenient. I normally use it in preference to the escalators, anyway. They lost a significant opportunity by not putting a lift near the Platform 1 buffers down to what would be virtually above the small lift to the Piccadilly Line. And despite still having some passageway would have been a substantial short-cut to the Victoria Line. OTOH, above ground, the NR Kings Cross improvements, undertaken during the period when Network Rail was private, I don't think NR was ever "private", although its status changed very slightly wrt its debt being on or off the books. are a magnificent blending of old and new to create a very pleasant and functional station. The Northern Ticket Hall (largely responsible for the extended walks to the deep tube) is part of the Kings Cross redevelopment, not St Pancras. The main escalators from there to the new concourse are in a very inconvenient place. And there's no excuse for the escalator up to the suburban platforms being a single tidal flow rather than a pair. The toilet facilities on the mezzanine are a joke, as is the lack of a pedestrian exit from the main platforms via the mezzanine. The resulting walk to St Pancras (via the buffers) is much extended. The area between the shed buffers and the flying saucer is a complete botch. Arriving, you have to go outside to get to the flying saucer, and when the scrum at the inadequate number of barriers when 12-car loads of people try to access one train in under ten minutes is absurd. Similarly, if you exit the tube via the steps/lift just outside the building there, the route to the flying saucer is definitely an afterthought. The answer, of course, would have been another exit from the north/south TfL passageway on the other side, for people heading for the ticket office/departure boards from the classic/subsurface halls. The contrast could not be more stark. They both have good and bad features. -- Roland Perry |
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