I'm spinning this off from one of the
London Bridge discussions, since that thread is starting to see discussion of other stations that people feel have a poor design - particularly with regard to confusing layouts.
What things do you think are important in making a station friendly to passengers. What stations would you cite as good and as poor examples of good design?
St Pancras has been mentioned - in the earlier thread - as a difficult-to-navigate station. Personally, having worked a block or two away for years, and having at one stage to use it quite often for Midland Main Line trains, I'm fine with it. The revamped version is
much more complicated and less intuitive - and slow - to navigate, but I've lived through the changes and know it well, so it's not a problem for me. But the fact that
I don't get lost there doesn't mean that I fail to recognise what an awful station it is for people who don't know it. (And I don't cast doubts on their intelligence, nor say I despair about the state of the world just because they find difficult something I am lucky enough to find easy. Others on the forum please note...)
Obviously, pushing the MML platforms out of the existing station, so one half of the train shed could become a shopping arcade alongside the Eurostar platforms, is a key problem, as is the fact that the fancy hotel means you can no longer enter from the road at the front like you used to. I'd say (not counting the entrance that mostly just relates to Eurostar) there are essentially 2
main ways in - on the lower level from the underground at the front, and via the new build on the east side opposite Kings Cross. And neither access gives an immediate overview of what's where in terms that are intelligible to a new user of the station who's not au fait with - and might not care about - which train company is which and so on.
A very simple diagram and explanation of the whereabouts of what are in effect 3 (if not 4) separate stations - MML, International etc, and Thameslink - would help immensely. Even just saying that the Thameslink routes - outlining them in very basic detail - are, separately, downstairs underground, would help!
Two complaints that I've had from friends and colleagues repeatedly, relate to the much slower interchange than before, and the stupid way the escalators to the MML are. People who used to come off the Met or Circle underground lines, and be on their Nottingham - or whatever - train platform (or vice versa) in a couple of minutes at most, say they now have about an extra quarter of an hour a day on their commute.
And I heard the tale of someone, not a regular user, arriving from the Met Line to go to Leicester, taking ages to find there the trains went from, getting there to find no ticket office (and they hadn't passed one on the way), going back downstairs to find the ticket office up the north end underneath the platforms, getting their ticket, and then finding the only way back up to the platform for the train they'd just bought a ticket for was to walk (seemingly) half way back to the underground where they'd started from before they found an "up" escalator to get to the platform level. They missed it. They swore a great deal about the fact that there was no way to get from the ticket office to the train without walking half the length of a shopping mall, and back again. Why on earth was the place designed with no easy connection between the trains and the tickets? At least the escalators to and from the Thameslink platforms are alongside a Thameslink ticket office.
(While I'm at it... I'm always telling people who don't know Kings Cross / St Pancras underground station to mostly ignore the interchange signs for changing between the 3 deep tube lines [and between them and other trains]. The new interchanges involve lengthy walks, where there are existing connections which take just seconds.)
