In message , at 11:08:15 on Tue, 20
Mar 2007, Clive D. W. Feather remarked:

I am sceptical about this new concourse. The Circle line is under the
main road, so all you are altering is where people climb up to the
surface. I can't see why taking people a hundred yards further north
to start with helps very much.

For the Circle, it won't.

Won't help very much, presumably.

Similarly, the escalators for the deep tube lines stretch pretty much
parallel to the main road, from a point at the front of the station
towards KX Thameslink, and the tube platforms "point" that way too.
Taking people from the deep tube lines via this new concourse is also
a long way round.

Not so.

The main exit from the Northern Line will be from the western end via
stairs and then two flights of escalators to the Northern Ticket Hall.
The horizontal reach of these escalators will cover much of the
distance involved (at present, from the Northern Line you follow a
hairpin to end up almost where you started).

Trying to visualise this. At the moment there's one long escalator down,
then you turn back for a short one to platform level. Where about on the
train is that (let's say you are catching one to London Bridge). If
that's the rear of the train, then the front will indeed be closer to
Euston with the potential of a short-cut from the front of the train to
the northern ticket hall.

For the Piccadilly Line there will be a second set of escalators,
starting at the north end of the platforms; these will connect into an
extension of the Thameslink access tunnel which will lead to the
midpoint of the two flights of escalators from the Northern Line. This
tunnel will *roughly* follow the route of the present King's Cross
footbridge from platform 3/4 to the present FCC ticket office. It will
therefore be no longer - and far more convenient - than the present exit.

Sounds like quite a dog-leg to get back to platforms 1-8. Might be a
quicker route to St Pancras, though. Are there plans to have tunnels
from the Northern Ticket hall to inside the St Pancras complex - perhaps
that's what those escalators are that emerge just inside the current
main entrance. Still quite a way from the MML platforms

That leaves only the Victoria Line exiting through the existing
concourse.

Are they proposing to close the Picc/Northern escalator shaft to the
existing concourse?
--
Roland Perry