On 29 May 2006 13:07:01 -0700, "Paul Oter"
wrote:

The new Western Ticket Hall at King's Cross St Pancras is now open,
with three new entrances: outside King's Cross, on the west side of St
Pancras Road, and a little further west along Euston Road. Two former
street entrances outside King's Cross have closed.

Access to the Met/Circle/H+C is now via the Western Ticket Hall only.

I'll be using this every working day. But here are a few initial
observations:

I was disappointed to see that there are no escalators down into the
new ticket hall, nor are there any down to the Met line platforms.
Although there appear to be lifts I expect lots of people will continue
to struggle up and down the steps with their luggage.

It's a nice large ticket hall, but causes people entering from the
Euston Road a long walk to the lift, which is in the north-western
corner -- almost a complete circuit.

The lift up from the platform was *already* out of order yesterday
evening.

There is some misleading signposting in the Western ticket hall, with
some signs for "St Pancras" pointing west rather than east. Presumably
the signposting refers to the

Equally steps down to the ticket hall in the south-eastern corner are
signposted for the Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria lines, with no
mention of the other lines.

On the Circle/H+C line, although the entrance to the platforms has
moved to the western end, eastbound trains continue to stop at the
eastern end. Since Circle/H+C trains are much shorter than the platform
a lot of people will find themselves having to walk along the platform
to the last car when the train stops.

All westbound trains now stop at the west end of the platform, which
narrows towards the end. Previously Circle and H&C trains stopped at
monitors two cars short of the end. One wonders why such monitors were
not installed on the eastbound.

The "old" ticket hall is now much more congested than before now that
the ticket counters are open.

PaulO

Yesterday it didn't help that the ticket office in the Western ticket
hall was not in use.

Overall an improvement on what went before, but a lot of work remains.
Presumably this explains why the Met line through Kings Cross wiil be
closed four more times up to September.

Regards,

Clive R Robertson
--
Clive R Robertson -- AS/400 Programmer.

Webmaster of http://www.osterleypark.org.uk/ -- this describes
a beautiful National Trust property in West London.