John Haines wrote in message ...
In article ,
TheOneKEA wrote:
I was at Stratford Station today and noticed something very
distressing: the lack of a second gateline between the Central Line/NR
platforms and the Jubilee Line platforms means that Pre-Pay users who
don't see the validators on the Central Line platforms (there aren't
very many and they're not easy to find) will mis-validate when they
try to pass the gateline to get to the Jubilee Line. Even stranger is
that there appears to be no obvious way to reach the Jubilee Line
platforms from the street without passing the entrance gateline and
the Jubilee Line and mis-validating again.

Is this a known issue or has no one simply noticed?

I don't know when they started to plan Oyster, but the gateline layout
at Stratford dates from about 1996 (from memory). Originally there was
only going to be the one gateline in the new Concourse - that guarding
the Jubilee Line. The old station entrance (to the east of the
concourse) had no gateline or even proper ticket barriers.

Does this mean that before Jubilee Line services terminated at
Stratford it was possible to reach the Central Line, the DLR and the
mainline platforms without actually possessing a valid ticket?
Fascinating.


It was then decided to install the one guarding ALL the lines. We had
to add the gateline to the drawings, and more importantly from our
point-of-view, the additional accommodation for the additional ticket
offices and machines at the eastern end of the station.

When the station opened there was a major revenue operation mounted.
That was when they realised the number of people who had been
travelling without tickets. Many of them got quite offended when
confronted by a gateline!!

I'm sure that would have been quite amusing to the TfL staff who were
placed on duty there to catch the fare dodgers.

Thank you for explaining the rationale behind the rather unusual
setup, which answers my first question, but it doesn't answer my
second question: how do you get from the street to the Jubilee Line
with a Pre-Pay Oyster without mis-validating?


John Haines
Design Manager for Hyder Consulting for the Stratford Concourse project.

Brad