Our politicians certainly weren't going to agree to that -- it might have made us feel more European, which would never do!
I sympathise greatly with the OP -- the facilities at the Gare du Nord were provided in the expectation that there would be on-train controls for as long as those were needed and that no more would really be needed at the EST platforms than at, say, the Thalys platforms. Only, as we all know, the British weren't having any of that.
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Totally agree -- GdN is vile. Brussels South is a decent station in a lousy area, but at least there's the Ibis straight across the road.
GdN dies at least have the St Christopher's Hostel opposite, meaning one can get a cheap night's stay in Paris whilst being close to the Eurostar.
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Hiw about a queue of those with Visa's and those without. Isn't there something like that at Gatwick Airport or has it all changed in recent times.I wasn't suggesting abandoning the idea of a single queue completely. What I was suggesting is dividing the front of the single queue into short queues of 1 or 2 people at each counter simply to reduce the idle time as each server waits for the next passenger to walk across.
Sometimes of course you will get unlucky and get stuck behind somebody with a dodgy visa. But the delay should not be excessive. And surely this is better than having to stand up for an hour or so waiting in lines at Gare du Nord because there are too few officers on duty to cope with the numbers? Such a system is used for outbound security checks at Manchester Airport but not for inbound passport checks.
My poor wife with her arthritic knee is threatening never to travel with Eurostar again.
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It seems most banks, railway stations don't agree but supermarkets do, so long as it's not the basket til or self service tills. Of course supermarkets hace many more trolly tills so single queue would be unworkable.In a previous job I was told that a single long queue can turn customers away, seeing one queue of 12 or so people waiting... so we split them up into one queue per cashier, so 4 queues of 4 people. As people see a queue of 3 or 4 people and not 12 people, they are less likely to turn around and walk away.(Also, if someone is slower at getting through the queue, the customer does not blame the staff member, but blames themselves, as they chose that particular queue to get in. This is the mentality of the place I worked :roll: ) - It is the same in McDonalds, they always try and spread people out so they queue one per cashier.
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