Now that Eurostar has been running the full length of HS1 and has been
serving St. Pancras for a little over five months, who was right?

Did all of the people living in areas reachable from, via or in SW
London who used to go via Waterloo give up and go to Gatwick? Did
swarms of people that once stuffed themselves into the Underground and
Thameslink to get to Waterloo from Euston, KxSTP and Liverpool St now
just walk up to the St. Pancras turnstiles?

I'm curious to know if any hard data exists on how precisely the
ridership on Eurostar has altered as a result of the switch to St.
Pancras.

Also, as an aside - will the minimum UIC B+ structure gauge be taken
advantage of anytime soon by larger HSE-conforming TGVs anytime within
the next 10 years?

On Sat, 10 May 2008 08:26:52 -0700 (PDT), TheOneKEA
wrote:

Now that Eurostar has been running the full length of HS1 and has been
serving St. Pancras for a little over five months, who was right?

Did all of the people living in areas reachable from, via or in SW
London who used to go via Waterloo give up and go to Gatwick? Did
swarms of people that once stuffed themselves into the Underground and
Thameslink to get to Waterloo from Euston, KxSTP and Liverpool St now
just walk up to the St. Pancras turnstiles?

I'm curious to know if any hard data exists on how precisely the
ridership on Eurostar has altered as a result of the switch to St.
Pancras.

I have seen no hard data at all. From my own experience of using the
Victoria Line I have certainly noticed a pronounced increase in people
with luggage heading to Kings Cross - largely from those stations south
of KX. Make what you will of that completely unscientific observation!

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.

--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

In message , at 16:38:27 on
Sat, 10 May 2008, Paul Corfield 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?
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 16:38:27
on Sat, 10 May 2008, Paul Corfield 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?

Closing a road for a week to install "tables" (low speed bumps at the
entrances) must top that!

On May 10, 11:59 am, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 16:38:27 on
Sat, 10 May 2008, Paul Corfield 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.

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?

--
Roland Perry

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?

On 10 May, 17:36, Roland Perry wrote:
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?

If the bottleneck is station capacity, which it is, then opening more
ticket office positions would be an expensive way of making things
worse.

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

"TheOneKEA" wrote in message
...
On May 10, 11:59 am, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 16:38:27 on
Sat, 10 May 2008, Paul Corfield 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.

By 'Midland Road LL' do you mean the [currently unused] entrance at the east
end of the St Pancras domestic concourse - which will also add MML and the
Kent Domestic pax into the passageway to the Northern ticket hall?

I am unaware of any 'direct' connection from the low level platforms...

Paul

On 12 May, 20:56, "Paul Scott" wrote:
By 'Midland Road LL' do you mean the [currently unused] entrance at the east
end of the St Pancras domestic concourse - which will also add MML and the
Kent Domestic pax into the passageway to the Northern ticket hall?

Peter Hendy recently cited the Thameslink move as a major cause of
overcrowding because passengers who used to have a direct route to the
tube platforms are now using the same barriers and escalators. Giving
them a separate ticket hall ought to fix this, even if it's not a
direct route. It'll also more evenly distribute passengers along the
platforms (which can't come soon enough on the Northern Line).

U

--
http://londonconnections.blogspot.com/
A blog about transport projects in London