[original thread on uk.railway]
[x-posted to uk.transport.london]

On Jul 8, 11:54*am, Neil Williams wrote:
Once again, the barriers on the bridge at Paddington caused a very
quick build-up of queues this morning, causing disruption to journeys,
and once again the poorly-placed ticket machine queues got in the
way. *This was not helped by someone getting luggage stuck in the
barrier, which the staff could not see and did not respond quickly to
it when it was pointed out.

These barriers really need to be removed, bringing the entire bridge
and LUL platforms into the same CTA.

CTA? (Common ticketed area?)

*The only risk this would seem to
bring is that a PAYG Oyster or Tube ticket user *might* be able to, by
way of an unresolved journey, get onto the main platforms. *A
Travelcard will, after all, open the barriers anyway. *Or at least,
fGW need to adopt the LM policy of opening them fully in the peaks.

I *think* you're suggesting that the entire overbridge should be
barriered, right? Or not barriered - it's not quite clear to me. (I
don't quite understand the "*might*" reference w.r.t. access to the
main platforms.)

Gating the entire overbridge would bring its own set of issues - the
overbridge is used as a route to and from the exit at the north side
of the station (towards the canal basin and Harrow Rd beyond). Plus
there seems to be the desire for HEx to use ungated platforms (ditto
with GatEx), so as to enable the rush and jump on and buy ticket on-
board flexibility.

Regardless, the situation sounds rather less than ideal. (Long term,
as part of Crossrail, the LU H&C/ lasso line platforms are to get a
new entrance which should help matters - must admit I'm not up on the
details of this though.)