Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim Roll-Pickering[_2_]
Paul Corfield wrote:
I wasn't there and have never been there during rush hour on the
current station layout. However the various photo images that have
been sprayed in the media over the weeks show a station completely
jammed full with people pressed up against the gatelines *and* people
queuing outside the station too.
Allowing a station to get to the point where there is no circulation
space is really rather daft. Even LU at its most overloaded stations
seem to do a bit better than that in that two way flows in and out
remain possible.
Some weeks earlier I used London Bridge in the evening peak but travelling
against the tide and it was pretty lousy then on an average evening. There
were few clear signs to direct incoming passengers to the correct gates and
then once through them it was "Fight your way through the crowd to either
the exit or the tube escalators" - and these are two distinct destinations
on such a busy concourse with all the consequences for having to cut
through - and so that just adds to congestion and frustration. Outgoing
passengers were all just piling up on the concourse with no idea at all
which platforms their trains would depart from. There was no attempt to
encourage some space around the barriers or to make it easy to move around.
Notably the platforms themselves looked very empty unless they had a train
in them and the system had declared its destination. There didn't seem to be
any cases of people awaiting a train on the platform itself, either due to
altered patterns or the info system adopting a "don't tell until the driver
is in the outward cab" approach. Great for incoming passengers who don't
have to fight their way off the train itself but it just adds to the scrum
to get to a train with only a few minutes' warning.
--
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This issue was discussed a week ago on the Venessa Feltz phone-in
programme on Radio London. I listened to the first half hour while driving. It
was very interesting listening to the opinions of people who use London Bridge
twice a day.
Two points in particular came out. The first was that passengers waiting to
board a train are not told from which platform their train will leave until about
two or three minutes before departure. This inevitably causes a panic-stricken
rush at the last minute as people are desperate not to miss their train. The
second point is that the station staff do not speak English at all well and do
not know any more than the passengers about what is going on.
How difficult would it be to tackle these two issues?