On 26 Mar, 20:26, Mizter T wrote:
On 26 Mar, 16:48, MIG wrote:





On 26 Mar, 15:10, "Paul Scott" wrote:

"Paul Scott" wrote:

"Boltar" wrote:

Is the passageway to Monument closed for some reason?

I read somewhere a few weeks ago that suggested nothing is actually
closed, its just that a couple of escalators are stopped for maintenance,
and are being used as fixed steps, which can be difficult for some people
to use. Hence the 'scare stories' are being used as a deterrent just to
keep the numbers of interchanging pax down compared to normal.

Which may have been true then, but obviously not from next week I see....

As ever, they give only directions rather than information. *I still
can't work out whether they are encouraging people to avoid the
station because it's going to be difficult, or whether a number of
escalator-free passageways will actually be blocked.

Also, as has been hinted at, if you can't interchange between the
Central and the Northern, how can you enter or exit the Northern?
Will they close both the surface passageway between Lombard Street and
the main ticket office and the deep one via the spiral staircases?

I admire your sentiments, but I'm not convinced it'd really be wise to
follow your course of action. If LU in fact said that it is in fact a
sly back route between Bank and Monument then perhaps loads of
passengers would attempt to use it, leading to the possibility of
massive congestion and overcrowding on a route that simply didn't have
the capacity for all these people.

Perhaps this is just a case of wily passengers working out where the
holes in the system are so they can take advantage of them, whilst the
less inquisitive majority follow the official advice and thus don't
block up the whole station.

If all the shortcuts at stations around the Underground network were
made explicit then overall we'd be worse off. An element of herding is
necessary when dealing with the shear number of people that use the
Tube.


I had a partial look during daytime today (it could be different at
different times) while coming out of the DLR.

The escalators at the north end of the DLR are both going upwards (not
sure how you'd get into the DLR, maybe via Lombard Street ticket hall
and Northern Line).

That gets you to the area just up form the north end of the Northern
Line. The next escalators upwards from there are working, but routes
to the Central are closed off, both the lower passageway to the spiral
staircases and, if you go up the escalators, the staircase back down
that comes out further west along the Central platforms, so at the top
of those escalators, you are diverted to the escalators to the Lombard
Street ticket hall, at which you can exit, go through the sub-surface
subway, and go back into the Central via the main ticket hall.
(Presumably treated as a continuation for PAYG.)

There seems to have been a very determined decision to block the non-
escalator parts of routes to/from the Central Line at the side of the
station complex where no renewal work now seems to be going on. The
work is presumably at the Monument end.

I honestly can't work out the reasoning behind this, other than a
strategy of making Bank so horrible to use that people will stay away
and make it safer. But then, the whole of LU could be made totally
safe by closing it down permanently.

There are always reasonable-sounding arguments on the grounds of
safety, but something is not quite right about the way that LU's
standard response to a lot of people trying to use its services is to
close them down. One gets the feeling that LU management would close
football stadiums on Saturdays and supermarkets in the runup to
Christmas.