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