Last night at about 1830 I was at Tottenham Court Road. Of the three
escalators which lead up to the ticket hall, two were coming down and
only one was going up, which is in itself unusual. This meant that
there was a big crowd building at the bottom of the one up escalator.

At Tottenham Court Road, when you get to the bottom of the escalators,
you're meant to go straight ahead for the Central Line, or left for the
Northern Line. However, if you go right, you can also get to the
Central Line, but you're walking against one of the exit routes from
the CL.

As I said, last night there was a big crowd at the bottom of the up
escalator, which meant that loads of people who were trying to cut down
this way were shoving their way through an already large crowd. I said
to one woman who was screaming out "Excuse me! Let me through!" that
if she'd go the signposted way it'd be much easier on everyone.
Needless to state I got a mouthful of abuse.

There was a member of staff at the bottom of the escalators. He had
one of those temporary barrier things partially erected. All he needed
to do was extend it out slightly further and the problem would have
gone away, as people would have been forced to walk straight ahead for
the Central Line, thus creating two clear pathways, one in and one out.

Which leads me to the question in the thread header: why don't tube
staff enforce the one way systems properly? It's not just at TCR,
although the example above is one of the worst on the system; I've
almost never seen barriers in place to enforce the routing, only
signage. Is it something to do with fire regulations, that you can't
"block" any entrance or exit?

Patrick

wrote in message
ups.com...
Last night at about 1830 I was at Tottenham Court Road. Of the three
escalators which lead up to the ticket hall, two were coming down and
only one was going up, which is in itself unusual. This meant that
there was a big crowd building at the bottom of the one up escalator.

At Tottenham Court Road, when you get to the bottom of the escalators,
you're meant to go straight ahead for the Central Line, or left for the
Northern Line. However, if you go right, you can also get to the
Central Line, but you're walking against one of the exit routes from
the CL.

As I said, last night there was a big crowd at the bottom of the up
escalator, which meant that loads of people who were trying to cut down
this way were shoving their way through an already large crowd. I said
to one woman who was screaming out "Excuse me! Let me through!" that
if she'd go the signposted way it'd be much easier on everyone.
Needless to state I got a mouthful of abuse.

There was a member of staff at the bottom of the escalators. He had
one of those temporary barrier things partially erected. All he needed
to do was extend it out slightly further and the problem would have
gone away, as people would have been forced to walk straight ahead for
the Central Line, thus creating two clear pathways, one in and one out.

Which leads me to the question in the thread header: why don't tube
staff enforce the one way systems properly? It's not just at TCR,
although the example above is one of the worst on the system; I've
almost never seen barriers in place to enforce the routing, only
signage. Is it something to do with fire regulations, that you can't
"block" any entrance or exit?

That's a damned fine question. I've noticed that lots of the overcrowding
issues in stations during rush hour are due to people bunching up and
doing, well, ridiculous things in public. People slowly meandering across a
foot tunnel, causing everyone behind them to stop and bump into each other.
Mothers dragging their kids along side them, blocking the two-people-wide
passageways. People stopping when at the top of escalators, even if they're
walking the left. Plus, couple in the usual London pedestrian insanity
(randomply stopping dead, or even better, randomly walking backwards), and
people just straight-up not looking where they're going, and the network is
in shambles, simply due to people wandering through the station like they're
on heroin, seeminly incapable to realise when they're getting in other
peoples' way.

Don't even get me started on people reading newspapers when walking along...
****ers.

dave
Patrick

d wrote:

I've noticed that lots of the overcrowding issues in stations during
rush hour are due to people bunching up and doing, well,
ridiculous things in public. People slowly meandering across
a foot tunnel, causing everyone behind them to stop and bump into each
other. Mothers dragging their kids along side them,
blocking the two-people-wide passageways.

They are not *blocking* the passageway. They just limit your ability to
walk faster, just as in any other crowded traffic situation. Does it
really matter if you get to the platform 5 seconds later? (The chance
of missing a train due to that delay is less than 5%.) How do you
expect a parent to keep a small child safe in a crowded passageway other
than by holding the child's hand?
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

wrote:

Which leads me to the question in the thread header: why don't tube
staff enforce the one way systems properly?

Probably because it is legally unenforceable. Other than having an LUL
member of staff berating travellers there's not much that they can actually
do about it - and staff can be better utilised doing other things, I
suspect.

It would also help if LUL were consistent in their signage, not only on
one-way systems. Some staircases are labelled 'Keep Left' (ought to be
obvious), some are labelled 'Keep Right' and most are not labelled at all!
The same applies to some passageways. It's very common to walk along a
passageway on the left and encounter some brainless goon coming the other
way, on the right, who resolutely will not move.

"Jack Taylor" wrote in message
...


It would also help if LUL were consistent in their signage, not only on
one-way systems. Some staircases are labelled 'Keep Left' (ought to be
obvious), some are labelled 'Keep Right' and most are not labelled at all!
The same applies to some passageways. It's very common to walk along a
passageway on the left and encounter some brainless goon coming the other
way, on the right, who resolutely will not move.

LU possibly use different markings at either end - keeps everyone amused...

Paul

Jack Taylor wrote:
wrote:
Which leads me to the question in the thread header: why don't tube
staff enforce the one way systems properly?

Probably because it is legally unenforceable.

I disagree.

Other than having an LUL
member of staff berating travellers there's not much that they can actually
do about it

Yes, that's how they would enforce it legally.

and staff can be better utilised doing other things, I
suspect.

But you are probably right about that.

Michael Hoffman wrote:
Jack Taylor wrote:
wrote:
Which leads me to the question in the thread header: why don't tube
staff enforce the one way systems properly?

Probably because it is legally unenforceable.

I disagree.

Other than having an LUL
member of staff berating travellers there's not much that they can actually
do about it

Yes, that's how they would enforce it legally.

and staff can be better utilised doing other things, I
suspect.

But you are probably right about that.


I encountered the smae situation at TCR on a Saturday a few weeks back,
except that the area was a bit less crowded. I think it is down to a
large proportion of people being idiots when moving around in places
such as underground station. Ambling along three abreast, stopping
suddenly to read an advert on the wall, or stopping to hold a
conversation. These are meant to be areas where people move through,
not recreational areas to do what you want.
I got into a discussion about this with someone a while back. Their
opinion was that sixty or seventy years ago the Underground was just as
crowded, but people were politer and new how to conduct themselves.
Then London went through a period when people drove into town, no-one
came as tourists because the place was a craphole and the tube was
emptier. Now you can't drive in London and the tourists are back, the
tube is busy again, but the politeness and intelligence shown by a
previous generation has disappeared.

Neill

Jack Taylor wrote:
wrote:

Which leads me to the question in the thread header: why don't tube
staff enforce the one way systems properly?

Probably because it is legally unenforceable.

I'm not really talking about legally enforceable, slapping people with
fines for walking down a passageway the wrong way. I mean taking
action as outlined in the original post, i.e. putting a barrier up,
which would have completely resolved the situation in this instance.

Patrick

Neillw001 wrote:

I encountered the smae situation at TCR on a Saturday a few weeks
back, except that the area was a bit less crowded. I think it is down
to a large proportion of people being idiots when moving around in
places such as underground station.

I think that you could have stopped at 'when moving around'! ;-)

It's the same everywhere. People, most often of the female persuasion, have
a habit of just stopping for no apparent reason, in the middle of a swathe
of flowing pedestrians. For some reason, a quick glance over the shoulder
before doing so seems to be too much like hard work.

A couple of years ago, in the midst of a fairly swiftly moving crowd of
pedestrians, the woman in front of me stopped abruptly and bent down (for
what I have no idea). I tried desperately to stop in time and ended up very
nearly making contact with her voluptuous bottom, leaning over her and very
close to falling on top of her. She was utterly oblivious throughout,
despite some Anglo-Saxon expletives being aimed in her direction.

Jack Taylor wrote:

It would also help if LUL were consistent in their signage, not only on
one-way systems. Some staircases are labelled 'Keep Left' (ought to be
obvious), some are labelled 'Keep Right' and most are not labelled at all!

The worst ones tend to be when the normal up escalator is taken out of
service and the down is switched to up running. I've seen many a collision
at Bank/Monument because on the escalators is running the wrong way to
everything else, and everyone in the long corridors is sticking to the side
of the esclator they've just come off.