What's the official minimum connection time between St Pancras and King's Cross?

[arb]

Reason for asking is that yesterday I did a journey from East Croydon (ECR) to Ely (ELY), with a connection between St Pancras (STP) and King's Cross (KGX). The ticket was a walk-up ticket, bought at the station, so no itinerary with the booking, but I was following a journey shown to me by National Rail Enquiries (NRE) at the time of travel. The journey was disrupted (not enough for Delay Repay) but it was only whilst working out alternatives did I notice that NRE was allowing 27 minutes for the original connection. According to brtimes.com, it should be 31 minutes (15 minutes at each of the two stations plus a 1 minute fixed link between them). Am I missing something?

The exact journey offered to me yesterday was:
* ECR (depart 1505) to STP (arrive 1545)
* KGX (depart 1612) to ELY (arrive 1725)

It's hard to reproduce this exactly for a date in the future, because there was planned engineering on the Thameslink route yesterday with a non-standard timetable, but I can get something similar for a journey on Monday, with an even smaller 22 minute connection between STP and KGX:
* ECR (depart 1521) to STP (arrive 1550)
* KGX (depart 1612) to ELY (arrive 1723)
Both NRE and Great Northern's journey planner will offer me this itinerary. Interestingly TrainSplit won't - it forces me to get the previous train from ECR, giving a 37 minute connection from STP to the 1612 from KGX, presumably honouring the official 31 minutes.

(Yes, I know that 31 minutes is ridiculously excessive for this connection. I actually arrived at STP at approximately 1600 and still had enough time to walk to KGX by 1612. Part of me now wishes I hadn't, so that I could see what Thameslink's Delay Repay system would have made of this!)

 

[Hadders]

The official interchange time is 31 minutes but it seems certain online retailers sell tickets with itineraries based on a 20 minute connection time.

 

[yorkie]

Yes it's 31 minutes by the manual calculation method and using all publicly documented information.

However l, clearly 31 minutes is far too much and certain sites reduce this, with permission from RDG, however RDG don't advertise this anywhere.

Unfortunately RDG has chosen not to make this explicitly stated anywhere, and therefore created yet another confusing situation.

All they need to do is publicly state that the interchange time can be reduced, and all retailers would be able to follow suit.

 

[arb]

Interesting, thanks. I do wonder if the reduced connection time message has made it through to the Delay Repay teams, as well as the journey planner teams? In a similar situation in the future, I'll make sure to keep a copy of any such itinerary generated on-the-fly, just in case it leads to a Delay Repay argument!

 

[lkpridgeon]

Interesting, thanks. I do wonder if the reduced connection time message has made it through to the Delay Repay teams, as well as the journey planner teams? In a similar situation in the future, I'll make sure to keep a copy of any such itinerary generated on-the-fly, just in case it leads to a Delay Repay argument!

Delay repay is based on what happened on the day. You are (in theory) entitled to take the full 31 minutes you're entitled to for interchange purposes. However, if you make an earlier service in that interchange window you are only entitled to it based on your actual arrival.

There's a bit about not deliberately delaying yourself further, however -- that's hard for them to prove. But it might get flagged for manual review to ask why you deliberately took the first service after 31minute interchange rather than say a theoretical one within 25-30 minutes of the interchange.

 

[Haywain]

Delay repay is based on what happened on the day. You are (in theory) entitled to take the full 31 minutes you're entitled to for interchange purposes. However, if you make an earlier service in that interchange window you are only entitled to it based on your actual arrival.

However, if you have been issued an itinerary by an accredited site and have been delayed by a qualifying amount of time against that itinerary you should be entitled to Delay Repay compensation. The passenger should not be punished for a failure to impose the advertised interchange time.

 

[arb]

My point was to suppose I not made the 1612 as shown in the original itinerary, and subsequently suffered (I would guess, I haven't checked the exact timetable) a 30 minute delay. Would they have honoured that claim against the original itinerary, or would they have said that the 1612 did not constitute a valid connection, because it wasn't 31 minutes, and therefore claimed I had no delay?

 

[lkpridgeon]

If it's a case of not making the booked (ie; through an accredited TIS itinerary) connection where no rail delay is present -- minimum connection time would not generally be taken into account. No delay repay would be repaid as the connection wasn't broken by the railway and you agreed to the given itinerary with that interchange time (it would be argued that you broke the itinerary).

If there's rail delay of say 1 minute you could claim delay repay as the connection was broken by the railway. However, you must have actually been delayed in arrival.

If you are delayed 1 minute but still make the connection you are not entitled to delay repay. As it's based on the actual arrival time vs booked arrival time.

In your case if the ECR to STP was on-time. And you failed to make the booked KGX-ELY connection due to no fault of the industry. You wouldn't be able to claim. Some discretion may be shown though.

If the KGX-ELY left early you'd also be able to claim as the connection would be broken. As long as you take the later service.

So general questions are:

• Has the rail industry broken the booked connection?
• Has your arrival to the ticketed/itinerary destination been delayed (by a given threshold)?
• Have you made reasonable efforts to minimise your own delay?

If all three are met delay repay is payable.

You may be able to complain to the retailer if the connection time wasn't possible using the consumer rights act (for ie: reasonable care and skill or lack of repeatability).

 

[arb]

Ha, I like the idea of trying to claim Delay Repay from (for example) Thameslink, having them reject it with "you didn't leave enough connection time", and then immediately complaining to them again as the retailer (if I'd bought from them) under the consumer rights act, quoting their own previous rejection of the Delay Repay claim as justification

Of course, in my example, there was no booked itinerary, I was using a pre-bought flexible ticket from a ticket machine, with results from a journey planner obtained as I arrived at the station. So I think my biggest (theoretical) difficulty would have been trying to convice whoever I was claiming Delay Repay from that "yes, really, this is the itinerary that the journey planner showed to me at the time".

 

[TUC]

The official interchange time is 31 minutes but it seems certain online retailers sell tickets with itineraries based on a 20 minute connection time.

Why was it ever set at 31 minutes in the first place, given they are adjacent stations?

 

[arb]

It's the result of universally applying a set of rules that appear logical at first glance, without looking at any weird anomolies that they throw up. The 31 minutes is made up of the minimum connection time within King's Cross (set at 15 minutes), plus the time to get between the two stations (set at 1 minute), plus the minimum connection time within St Pancras (set at 15 minutes). As far as I know, exactly the same rules are applied to all transfers between two London terminals.

I guess the fact that the time to get between the stations, ignoring the internal connection times, is set at 1 minute shows that they know the total time is excessive and they're doing whatever they can within the confines of the system's rules to work around that. Because I bet it would take more than 1 minute to get from the main entrance of KGX to the main entrance of STP if the road between them was busy, and the pedestrian crossing/traffic lights were against you. So arguably that 1 minute is too short, but I don't want to suggest they should increase it!

 

[Hadders]

Why was it ever set at 31 minutes in the first place, given they are adjacent stations?

It's the sum of:

15 minutes interchange time for Kings Cross
1 minute travel time
15 minutes interchange time for St Pancras

31 minutes is excessive but the minimum interchange time needs to account, for example, for someone arriving at the rear of a train on platform 0 at Kings Cross and who needs to get to the northbound Thameslink platform. The person shoud be unfamiliar with the station layout, carrying luggage and walk at a slower than average pace.

 

[redreni]

Yes it's 31 minutes by the manual calculation method and using all publicly documented information.

However l, clearly 31 minutes is far too much and certain sites reduce this, with permission from RDG, however RDG don't advertise this anywhere.

Unfortunately RDG has chosen not to make this explicitly stated anywhere, and therefore created yet another confusing situation.

All they need to do is publicly state that the interchange time can be reduced, and all retailers would be able to follow suit.

This is one of the situations where I sometimes use Trainline or one of the white-label TL sites in preference to the forum's site, because they find itineraries with shorter (though by no means remotely tight) connections between St Pancras and Kings Cross.

I hesitate to suggest that the forum's site might proactively ask RDG if it would be okay for them to implement the 20 minute reduced MCT, just in case it backfires and RDG starts enforcing the 31 minutes for everyone instead.

I do despair, though, at excessive MCTs that cause perfectly sensible itineraries not to be offered, sometimes with an itinerary 30 minutes or even 60 minutes longer (depending on the frequency of the respective services) being offered instead. People complain if they miss their connections or encounter stress because the connections are tight, but rarely complain that the connection times they're given are too long. What people will do, however - without ticket retailers or TOCs necessarily even knowing - is look at a set of journey planner results and think "hmm, it'd be quicker to drive" or "if it takes as long as that I'll save a bit of money and take the coach" or "even accounting for the faff of getting to the airport and navigating security, I might as well fly". Journey times matter. Especially to non-rail enthusiasts.

 

[Kite159]

31 minutes to get between Kings Cross & St Pancras is just excessive, even taking into account the world's slowest walker, just like most cross London minimum connection times.

 

[TUC]

There does need seem to be any great consistency even when it comes to transfer times within individual stations. For example, it is arguably quicker to get from Kings Cross platform 0 to platform 11 than it is to get from Manchester Picadilly platforms 13/14 to platform 1. However the former's transfer time is 15 minutes and the latter 10 minutes.

 

[Hadders]

31 minutes to get between Kings Cross & St Pancras is just excessive, even taking into account the world's slowest walker, just like most cross London minimum connection times.

I agree that the minimum connection time between Kings Cross and St Pancras at 31 minutes is excessive but I don't think that cross-London interchange times in general are excessive.

Most of 'us' on here are well versed in how to cross London and consequently make the connection far faster than the minimum. But, if you were to ask the average person on the Clapgam Ombibus I suspect many would say they are too short.

 

[redreni]

I agree that the minimum connection time between Kings Cross and St Pancras at 31 minutes is excessive but I don't think that cross-London interchange times in general are excessive.

Most of 'us' on here are well versed in how to cross London and consequently make the connection far faster than the minimum. But, if you were to ask the average person on the Clapgam Ombibus I suspect many would say they are too short.

They're just massively inconsistent.

Look at the tube transfer time from Canary Wharf EL to Waterloo - it's really quite tight given how far you have to walk.

 

[miklcct]

They're just massively inconsistent.

Look at the tube transfer time from Canary Wharf EL to Waterloo - it's really quite tight given how far you have to walk.

And the reverse between Stratford and London. A massive 38 minutes without counting the time within the station in both ends.

I do despair, though, at excessive MCTs that cause perfectly sensible itineraries not to be offered, sometimes with an itinerary 30 minutes or even 60 minutes longer (depending on the frequency of the respective services) being offered instead. People complain if they miss their connections or encounter stress because the connections are tight, but rarely complain that the connection times they're given are too long. What people will do, however - without ticket retailers or TOCs necessarily even knowing - is look at a set of journey planner results and think "hmm, it'd be quicker to drive" or "if it takes as long as that I'll save a bit of money and take the coach" or "even accounting for the faff of getting to the airport and navigating security, I might as well fly". Journey times matter. Especially to non-rail enthusiasts.

The more often people will do is to enter the journey into Google Maps (which doesn't take the minimum connecting time into account) and follow its suggestions.

 

[Haywain]

who needs to get to the northbound Thameslink platform.

Or more likely to one of the EMR platforms, with the train at the 'country' end of the platform and barriers closing a couple of minutes prior to departure. At least with Thameslink there's a decent chance your train will have been delayed already!

 

[Hadders]

Or more likely to one of the EMR platforms, with the train at the 'country' end of the platform and barriers closing a couple of minutes prior to departure. At least with Thameslink there's a decent chance your train will have been delayed already!

Very True! And thinking about it to reach the EMR platforms you have to walk quite a distance in the wrong direction before you get to the escalator to take you up to platform level.

 

[redreni]

Very True! And thinking about it to reach the EMR platforms you have to walk quite a distance in the wrong direction before you get to the escalator to take you up to platform level.

It depends what you mean by "quite a distance". Personally I wouldn't really describe it as such. Particularly not if the escalators worked (and you don't design the MCTs for things like non-working escalators - that's what the padding factor is there for).

 

[arb]

The minimum connection time within one station is designed to let you get from one extremity of the station (on an arriving train), to the main concourse, and then to another extremity of the station (for a departing train).

If you're doing a cross-London transfer, you only need the first part of this in the arrival station, and the second part in the departure station. So would a better rule for determining the total connection time be the sum of:

• half the minimum connection time at the arrival station
• the fixed link time that gives the actual time to transfer between the two stations (which may need adjusting from current values, e.g. KGX to STP might need to be increased from 1 minute to, say, 5 minutes)
• half the minimum connection time at the departure station

This would give you 7.5 + 5 + 7.5 = 20 for KGX to STP, which seems to be in line with what RDG are unofficially letting some journey planners use.

You could then simplify this rule, because (I think) all London Terminals have a 15 minute internal connection time, so instead define it as "the fixed link time to get between the two stations, plus 15 minutes".

And then why not take it one step further, and include the 15 minutes in the fixed link time between the two stations, so it's just the fixed link time by itself, plus nothing else? Then you'd have complete flexibility to set any appropriate time for any pair of stations without the rules of what you have add together causing weird anomalies.

 

[miklcct]

The minimum connection time within one station is designed to let you get from one extremity of the station (on an arriving train), to the main concourse, and then to another extremity of the station (for a departing train).

If you're doing a cross-London transfer, you only need the first part of this in the arrival station, and the second part in the departure station. So would a better rule for determining the total connection time be the sum of:

• half the minimum connection time at the arrival station
• the fixed link time that gives the actual time to transfer between the two stations (which may need adjusting from current values, e.g. KGX to STP might need to be increased from 1 minute to, say, 5 minutes)
• half the minimum connection time at the departure station

This would give you 7.5 + 5 + 7.5 = 20 for KGX to STP, which seems to be in line with what RDG are unofficially letting some journey planners use.

You could then simplify this rule, because (I think) all London Terminals have a 15 minute internal connection time, so instead define it as "the fixed link time to get between the two stations, plus 15 minutes".

And then why not take it one step further, and include the 15 minutes in the fixed link time between the two stations, so it's just the fixed link time by itself, plus nothing else? Then you'd have complete flexibility to set any appropriate time for any pair of stations without the rules of what you have add together causing weird anomalies.

I don't think this is workable.

Not all London Terminals have 15 minutes as the minimum connecting time. For example, London Bridge and Marylebone is 10 minutes, Waterloo East is 4 minutes, while City Thameslink is only 3 minutes.

However I do agree with your suggestion in halving the internal time when a fixed link is involved. This should be generalised to all fixed links in the network, not just between London Terminals.

Of course, the ideal is to add a new model to allow for connecting time between each pair of platforms in a station, and from the entrance to the platform for each platform. For example, a cross-platform interchange can be listed as 1 minute while changing between Southeastern High Speed and Thameslink can be listed as 15 minutes.

 

[Haywain]

However I do agree with your suggestion in halving the internal time when a fixed link is involved.

If you did that you would have to extend the times currently used for City Thameslink and Waterloo East as they wouldn’t even allow a realistic time to get to an exit.

 

[SargeNpton]

The data standards for station to station connections times are those set back in 1992 for the original British Rail journey planner (CATE) which was created for use by telephone enquiry bureau and travel centre staff - who could then interpret the results before giving the information to the passenger.

Unfortunately, no review of those data standards has taken place to let today's more sophisticated journey planners to deal with situations such as Kings Cross-St Pancras. Or indeed connections within complex stations such as London Bridge.

One other failing is where only required for engineering works on certain days, which allow tickets from/to one station to be accepted at a nearby station on another route.

 

[Class800]

31 minutes to get between Kings Cross & St Pancras is just excessive, even taking into account the world's slowest walker, just like most cross London minimum connection times.

Probably a good solution would be to class them as one station complex as they have the same tube station Kings Cross St Pancras and then it's just the 15 mins. But sometimes good ideas are too good!

 

[Mcr Warrior]

For comparative purposes, what's the minimum connection time these days between London Euston and either St. Pancras and/or Kings Cross stations?

 

[jfollows]

For comparative purposes, what's the minimum connection time these days between London Euston and either St. Pancras and/or Kings Cross stations?

It depends on the time of day, see https://www.brtimes.com/!board?stn=EUS&show=info&date=20241112
35 to 45 minutes, made up of the minimum time at each station plus the time for the link between them
Logic as in post 12 above, replacing its “1 minute travel time” with 5,10 or 15 minutes depending on time of day. And the 5 minute travel time does not apply on Sundays, so it’s either 40 or 45 minutes then.

 

[Indigo Soup]

Of course, the ideal is to add a new model to allow for connecting time between each pair of platforms in a station, and from the entrance to the platform for each platform. For example, a cross-platform interchange can be listed as 1 minute while changing between Southeastern High Speed and Thameslink can be listed as 15 minutes.

That would, of course, require rolling back some of the mystery around whether the train that's used Platform 4 for the last six years will continue to use Platform 4....

For comparative purposes, what's the minimum connection time these days between London Euston and either St. Pancras and/or Kings Cross stations?

Didn't a table of transfer times between London terminals used to be published in the GBTT? I went looking for it online a couple of weeks ago to no avail; BRTimes has the information by station, but occasionally it's convenient to see the whole lot in one go.

 

[jfollows]

Didn't a table of transfer times between London terminals used to be published in the GBTT? I went looking for it online a couple of weeks ago to no avail; BRTimes has the information by station, but occasionally it's convenient to see the whole lot in one go.

Attached from 1985
I have earlier and later all-lines timetables which don’t contain this information.