Just so we're all clear, whilst it was no doubt uncomfortable and inconvenient on that concourse last night, at no point was it unsafe. There are very clear crowd management procedures, and they were implemented by the book. Every train I catch each morning has far higher levels of crowding density.
Really? It looks to me very clear that getting people to queue directly at the gateline, rather than keeping a good distance away, is a recipe for a crush as soon as the gates are activated or a platform announced. What would have happened ifin one of the apparent cases of passengers being pushed against the gate paddlesone of the gates had failed and snapped open, for instance? What if there had been an emergency and the concourse needed to be evacuated? What if someone in the middle of the concourse had a medical emergency and needed to be attended to as soon as possible? Just because customers were
not injured, it does not mean that there was not a significant risk of something nasty happening.
You can say that it was safe on paper, but the density I can see in the photographs is the sort I would expect to find
in an extremely crowded train, not
on a concourse (and I've been at Waterloo during major CSL2 eventsincidentally this usually closes when the concourse is full, but with plenty of breathing space for passengers to move and escape if they wish.)
As a further point of clarity, it was nothing to do with signal failures at London Bridge, both of which had been cleared up some hours before and weren't particularly disruptive anyway. It was caused by an unusually large number of people descending on the station as both the ELL, and Southern routes from Victoria, were closed which also had knock on delays to London Bridge services.
Fine.
So why in god's name were so many passengers sent to (the extremely-congested-on-a-good-day) London Bridge, rather than being diverted to complete their journey by bus, or put in taxis to a point where they could re-join a train? Why were SE passengers not sent to board their trains at Cannon Street (literally walk across the bridge and turn left)?
Because of the breakdown in communication and the crowding last night, SN had customers who, aside from being frustrated at the delay, were angry at not getting adequate information, andas a triple bonuswill now feel unsafe at London Bridge.
The incidents, including the sad fatality at Balcombe earlier in the day, that led to the events were probably unavoidable on the railway's part. But by putting more pressure on London Bridge than could be coped with, the railways have truly shown that the left arm does not know what the right arm is doing.
What an embarrassment.
