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Old January 3rd 08, 09:25 AM posted to uk.transport.london
MaxB MaxB is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Feb 2007
Posts: 48
Default New Year's Eve at Charing Cross

On 3 Jan, 09:11, Offramp wrote:
On Jan 3, 9:03 am, MaxB wrote:

On 3 Jan, 00:14, (Colin Rosenstiel) wrote:


In article
,


(BVETubeTrains) wrote:

The
problem was that you couldn't get into the station because the two
nomimal queues (over and underground) which started half way up the
Strand were actually mostly Underground passengers ...
Rubbish organisation - next time (if ever) I will just stay on the
platform at CX, watch the fireworks, and hop on the train.


I don't see how it could be organized to have two separate queues into
CX, for overground & Underground, without punters trying to bypass the
Tube queue by using the shorter overground queue.
There is a usable walkway along Villiers Street, high above the
pavement - could you perhaps have used this?


You are quite right but 2 queues WERE set up albeit you had to walk
200 yards up the Strand to get into them. It would have been much
better to have had "BR" access from the Trafalgar Sq side and
underground from the east with any connections between them closed
(there was also a link into the hotel). It is quiet clear that the
numbers of people, twice the forecast overwhelmed many facilities, and
short notice closusures were being made in addition to those
advertised. And, of course, I was only going to CX because Waterloo
East was shut from 2345! Weird.

The density of crowd precluded checking out other options, but every
short cut I attempted was always blocked by police e.g. no access at
all to Westminster Bridge, no access from the north on to Lambeth
Bridge, no access into Parliament SQ from the south, no access into
Whitehall from Horseguards etc etc.

MaxB