On Sat, 28 Jul 2012 17:57:18 +0000 (UTC), martin_petrov
wrote:

I've just come back from the Olympic Park this afternoon, and Stratford
was straining to cope with the sheer weight of numbers at 5pm - the Park
itself wasn't particularly busy, notably, there were almost no events
going on in the park, and it had a 'soft launch' type feel to it - but I
wandered through Westfield and it was absolutely heaving.

I'm not a huge fan of Stratford's layout, though I obviously appreciate
that without starting from scratch, it's hard to see how it could have
been done much differently. However, I'm still not sure that they've got
their flows quite right, as there were a lot of people trying to come out
at the bus station side, while nobody could get into the station on the
Westfield side. They'd even closed off the mezzanine entrance at that
time due to overcrowding.

By contrast, I got a number of trains today, including a North London
Line across to Stratford at lunchtime, and numerous Central Line trains,
and they were far from overcrowded. I have said all along that I believe
Stratford station itself is most likely to become the bottleneck as it's
pretty cramped, even with all the improvements, and there just isn't
enough exits/entrances.

I was there a few days ago, without Olympic crowds, and it struck me
that one problem was that the route from the cross passages to the
Olympic site wasn't as easy as it should be, given the difference in
levels. It must be really bad when you get tens of thousands of extra
people trying to get through. I wonder how it coped when last night's
ceremony (predictably) over-ran?

Presumably this is why they're trying to steer more people into using
West Ham, even though it's much further away.