In message , at 00:51:18 on
Mon, 10 Mar 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:
The current gates at Cambridge are typical of those shoe-horned into an
unsuitable location just to tick a box. Perhaps the redeveloped station
will have more room, more gates, and fewer such episodes.

And if I had been "ticket gate dictator" Cambridge would never have
been gated given the lack of space to provide sufficient gate
throughput for the demand.

These half arsed installations don't really help the case that
installing gates is generally beneficial (carefully worded on
purpose). That ORR has insisted they're left powered down in the peaks
shows someone got their sums and safety justification very wrong
indeed. If you can't cope with peak demand then don't bother.

Cambridge is slightly different from many places in that it has a steady
flow of passengers all day, and a very spread out peak (so I'm not sure
quite what hours Colin is talking about, although traditionally he's
rather Kings-Cross centric in his view).

The station is very busy at some 'traditional' off-peak times like 10am
on a Saturday, and in the evening the local (mainly outflow) peak is
from perhaps 4pm-6pm, but most London commuters won't be arriving back
until well after 6pm.

When they installed the gates the physical layout marooned the racks of
timetables/information leaflets (which are by the door to the platform).
I had supposed this to be an oversight that would be corrected, but
years later nothing has been done.

You can see them, top-middle, in this photo:

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/SME/ht...tos/800/o1424-
0000031.jpg
--
Roland Perry