On Jul 13, 9:39 am, Chris Tolley wrote:

No doubt. But that does not necessarily make it the cleverest thing to
do. For every circumstance in which you might foresee a more comfortable
and safer existence on the platform, there is probably a converse.

This is probably true. As it turned out, neither was safer, however
it was more comfortable remaining on the platform with about 100
people there than joining the hordes. When the trains started to be
announced, I deliberately ignored the first one out because that was
where most of the hordes would be (and it fortunately went from an off-
platform) and took the second, which was also from an off-platform but
more easily accessible with the crowds on the concourse reduced, and
on which there were plenty of seats.

(What that does show is that the Silverlink operation has tons of
spare capacity, which is of benefit when things go wrong as well as on
a daily basis, which just shows that it *can* be done even in London
and the South East if the will and money is there).

It does, admittedly, say something about my personality (and the
personalities of the other 99), I imagine, which is that I don't like
being told what to do but I do accept reason. "Can you leave this
train because we're going to send it to the depot to clear platforms
for more arrivals" would have me off straight away. "Get off because
we have decided to evacuate the platforms" has me questioning what's
going on. Some consider that a strength, others a weakness - one
thing is for sure I wouldn't ever fit in the armed forces. The
operators need to consider that in their dealing with people, and they
often don't.

Why are you convinced it was safer? You have only mentioned "the high
risk of a bomb attack at present", and when all is said and done, you
were talking about London, rather than Baghdad. The risk from a bomb is
surely infinitesimal in any normal sense of perspective. OTOH, there is
a much higher risk of being knifed in London, and I would have thought
that particular risk reduced in crowds.

This is true, though I would consider Euston platforms 8-11 in the
evening peak to be as an unlikely a location for a knifing as the
concourse. However, unhappy, packed crowds are a lot more dangerous
than no crowds in general - think football mobs. And from a pure
customer service perspective, there were 8 cars of passengers who were
mostly happy sitting on the train to wait which were turned into 8
cars of unhappy passengers and several hacked off members of staff who
got moaned at by a good proportion of said unhappy passengers.

I guess I don't like that any more than you do, and sadly it isn't a
South-East thing exclusively - indeed, didn't the SE get the idea from
Blackpool ? ;-)

Maybe so. The fact that they normally do not do that on the
Silverlink operation (as its own little island at Euston) makes its
use in the evening peak far more civilised than the other operations
that do do it. I hope London Midland do not change this, and I wish
VT would join them and start advertising platforms as soon as the
train was ready[1] rather than uniformly a few minutes before.

[1] In my view "ready"="inbound passengers are off" for the Euston VT
operation. It'd be far better to have passengers spread up the
platform with a few waiting by each door for them to be released once
cleaning was complete than it is to keep them on the concourse and
have them run at the last minute.

Indeed, on a different basis, one of the reasons I really like
Schiphol airport is that it advertises gates as soon as they are known
rather than 2 minutes beforehand. Thus, those who wish to get there
early can do, which reduces queueing and the rush. Not conducive to
keeping everyone in the BAA shopping centre, but a good professional
way to run an airport.

Neil