"Scott" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 29 Mar 2015 11:27:26 +0100, Clive Page
wrote:

TfL recently sent me an email message to tell me that:

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

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. 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.

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.

I don't know all the ins and outs, not living in London, but I
understood the plan was to redeploy staff to the passenger areas to
assist passengers. I assume there will be staff to assist visitors
and others in operating the machines.

and (in theory) twice as many machines

tim