On May 10, 5:36*pm, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
, at
09:28:54 on Sat, 10 May 2008, TheOneKEA remarked:

Kings Cross tube station also appears to impersonate "hell on earth" on
a fairly regular basis - despite all the improvement works. *I just hope
the remaining work does something to take some of the pressure off.

It's a farce. Has so much disruption ever before produced so little
improvement?

Probably because the disruption is creating capacity for which demand
already exists. I wouldn't be the least bit shocked if the entire
Underground/NR complex is just as busy after the LU northern ticket
hall, direct links from Midland Road LL and the KX western ticket hall/
piazza works are finished - it would prove that the improvements were
done about 5-10 years too late.

It also shows that the improvements are not sufficient. For the last ten
years the queues at the ticket offices have been unacceptably long, and
after the rebuilding, they still are. Why didn't they simply build more
ticket office positions?


That reminds me of a Two Ronnies joke about post offices.

"We all know the situation where there are four counters and three of
them are closed. Well, in future there will be twelve counters, and
eleven of them will be closed."

I arrived a Kings Cross from oop north in the evening a few months
back and needed to put some Oyster credit on for one journey home.

The ticket office was closed, so I stood in a long queue for a machine
that refused to take my money. A member of staff had a few attempts
at trying to get it to accept the perfectly good note and then told me
that there was a problem with that machine and I must now go and stand
in another long queue.

I asked why he and the other staff present didn't just open the ticket
office, which could deal with it easily, but they were all far too
busy running from queue to queue, helping punters who were having
problems with crappily-maintained machines, to answer my question.

I can't remember the exact hour, but the station was open and busy,
with lots of staff dealing very inefficiently with punters who were
desperately trying to hand over money.

Why couldn't they open the ticket office? Is it any wonder that some
people end up travelling without paying?