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[email protected] · March 10th 14, 12:29 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Mon, 10 Mar 2014 08:04:58 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

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.

Sure but that simply means that the analysis required to get a
workable gateline has to be done in more depth and with excellent
input from the operating staff who know all these nuances about demand
over a day, over a week and over the year. A judgement has to made
about how you handle regular, predictable demand and then what you do
for events which might draw exceptional crowds a couple of times a
year. London Underground has to deal with those variations all the
time and so do the TOCs.

Roland hasn't mentioned the bi-directional peak flows which mean none of the
present gates are bi-directional. The new gateline and the increase space
around it will allow some, including a wide gate, to be used both ways. No,
the peak flows are not the same in both directions!

I am not for a second saying it is easy just that it requires thought
and potentially a lot of money to get it right. I recall a post from
Colin (I think) that said the queues to buy tickets at Cambridge had
stretched out of the station and round to where I believe the Busway
bus stops are. I found that staggering but I guess it illustrates the
scale of demand. It's been a long while since I visited Cambridge so
I'm possibly out of date about the stop locations.

Saturday morning ticket queue lengths are legendary, yes. The queuing space
and ticket vending capacity is being to be greatly expanded, to 10 TVMs from
4 and to a maximum of 8 vending positions from 6.

--
Colin Rosenstiel