In message , at 11:27:26 on Sun, 29
Mar 2015, Clive Page remarked:
quote
I am writing to let you know that after Easter, we will be carrying out
improvement work at King’s Cross St. Pancras Tube station; this is
part of our plans to modernise the Tube. As a result, we are making
changes to the ticket hall and the ticket windows will be permanently
closed.
end quote

"The" ticket hall? There are three.

Well we all knew of TfL's desire to do away with all these pesky ticket
windows, but on Saturday I happened to walk past the western ticket
office at King's Cross twice. Both in the morning and in late
afternoon the queue for the ticket windows was so full that it didn't
all fit in the zig-zag barriers, there must have been 30 or 40 people
waiting each time.

And I've got a photo of the ticket machines with queues of a dozen
people at each. Maybe there are more of the machine now?

The queue noticeably lengthens soon after a train from Paris or
Brussels arrives.

I don't quite know why those in these long queues don't try to use the
ticket machines (but they often have long queues as well) but I suppose
that if I were just arriving in a foreign city for the first time I
might reckon it easier to get the right ticket from a human than from a
machine, given the complexity of the system. Some of these newly
arriving visitors might even, like me, have had unpleasant experiences
in using ticket machines in foreign cities before.

The answer is perhaps to have some "Tourist Oyster" vending machines. I
know the regular machines sell Oysters now, but some dedicated machines
would be simpler.

Whatever the reason, there are going to be a lot of unhappy customers
there after Easter. And TfL shows no signs at all of opening the
refurbished enquiry office near the western ticket hall which was
closed a few months ago.

That was a "travel centre", more to do with selling theatre and tour-bus
tickets. I wonder if they will have a more rail-ticket orientated
approach when it reopens?
--
Roland Perry