St Pancras - second impressions

St Pancras is stunning - no doubt about it.  But I thought it worth recording some second impressions now i have walked through it a few times and tried some of the shops.  How does it work as a building on a human scale?

impressions:

cold, very cold, bloody freezing.  I am generously insulated by nature, but it really is cold in there.  They are right to heat the seats in the Champagne bar.  They should provide reindeer skins parkas and huskies on entrance.

busy and rather crowded.  It is surprisingly busy during the day at the weekend - the huge space actually feels quite crowded - not as bad as Victoria or Waterloo but it doesn't feel like there is much room for the future.  The pedestrian flows don't work at all - too many pinchpoints and corners to turn with large crowds of people.  But can't be certain how this will turn out until all the undergound ticket halls etc are open.

unfinished.  Lots of not finished shops and stuff.  If you watched the documentary you will know they had to prioritise the travelators over the retail.  Quite a bit of improvising over unfinished bits.  The shops are slowly coming, but the current ones are a bit busy.  There is no market yet.  But there is the world's least busy M&S with a billynomates of a location at the far end under the train platform next to Thameslink.  Great selection too if you like M&S food

great chocolate - the Neuhaus choclatier is some of the best I have ever bought, ever.  Worth £800m to get this within ten minutes of my front door.

great baker - Peyton and Byrne have now opened - really really good artisan baked stuf, albeit refreshingly expensive.  Try the sausage roll.

statues mixed - the Betjeman one is great, the kiss/meeting place is a monstrosity.  We should back the Flying Scotsman into the station, attach a chain, stoke the boiler and pull the daft smooching couple down like the Saddam statue in Baghdad, but with steam power.

little signage - the designers deliberately suppressed the OTT signage of most stations - it makes a huge difference - your eyes are drawn to the amazing space, not the un-necessary signs cautioning you not to bring wildebeest into the station nor to leave your yak unattended.

hideous advent calendar - allegedly world's largest but is a poorly disguised billboard which spoils the view of the clock.  With any luck will be gone by 12th night and won't be replaced by a Hello magazine billboard.

nice try at activities for kids - they are trying with a Santa post box (letters, remember them) people in costume, Santa's grotto etc

loads of apparent tourists - people with cameras everywhere.  It might be more popular than Madame Taussauds.

If you haven't been in, then shame on you - go and have a look and do some retail therapy.

Comments

[Stuart]

I would agree with many of your comments on St.Pancras station. I would add that the shope in the arcade whilst of a high standard are much smaller than I expected them to be.

Also the floor throughout this area is terrible, badly laid and fitted and incredibly stained and dirty already. No effort seems to be made to keep it clean. However, it would have been better to fit the marble flooring they have at Paddington station.

The new Thameslink Station is very impressive and a huge improvement on the old station.

[Bruce Payne]

NOT ALL IS ROSY AT ST PANCRAS
Now that the initial hoo-hah over the refurbishment of St Pancras has subsided, and we’ve had some six months of actual use, a more considered judgement as to the merits of the new facilities can be attempted. No one can question the beauty and worth of the restoration of the fabulous Midland Grand Hotel and the station facilities themselves were in dire need of upgrading. Also, the old Kings Cross Thameslink station was a disgrace and to make a new station by the main St Pancras Station was a brilliant idea. Whether the expense of moving the terminal for the Eurostar trains from Waterloo to St Pancras was such a good idea is open to question. Maybe this was the only way that the funds could be found for the needed refurbishment of St Pancras, but the results are not all positive by any means. Whilst the facilities for travellers to and from our European neighbours may be luxurious and improved, the facilities for domestic travellers have been significantly worsened. The original station, commissioned by the Midland Railway, provided a grand and splendid London terminus for passengers to the midlands and the north. Now these same passengers have a second rate station and the designers of the new St Pancras clearly felt that these passengers deserved little consideration.

Much has been written about the architectural merits of the refurbished station but little about the ergonomics of the design and whether the station functions well within its new beautiful shell. It is here that the limitations of the station prove greatest and in particular for the domestic traveller, as so much more consideration was given to travellers on their way to Europe. Some of the poor design could be improved even now but the inherent limitations of the site mean that many of the problems can never be properly and fully addressed. There was a great fanfare about the longest champagne bar in the world, which is over 90 metres long. The same design that allowed for this strange facility also provided for some of the worst features of the refurbished station.

THE LONG WALK HOME
When Waterloo provided for the London termination of the Eurostar trains the additionally needed long platforms were added alongside the existing platforms for domestic services. David Glasspool’s excellent plan of Waterloo, which can be seen at http://www.kentrail.co.uk/waterloo_international.htm, illustrates this well. Domestic passengers therefore saw little change in their journeys and, apart from increased passenger numbers using the facilities, little inconvenience was caused by the introduction of the new trains to Europe. Not so at St Prancras. Here the station site was too narrow to accommodate additional platforms alongside the existing ones. To provide for the longer Eurostar trains the existing platforms were extended into a new building at the far end of the station (see the model illustrating this on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:KingsCrossDevelopmentModel.jpg). Domestic trains were relegated to this new building and no longer used the platforms within old building at all. In order to get to the platforms housing the domestic inter-city services to the midlands, Sheffield and further, passengers are forced to walk the whole length of the old station and enter the new building added on the end. The nearest Undergound service is located at Kings Cross, so the many thousands of passengers needing to transfer from their trains to and from the midlands and the north on to a Tube train all have to walk this distance. This includes not only the fit and healthy but also the not so fit and well and of course many arrive at St Pancras with large quantities of luggage as well.

One might have hoped that the architects and planners might have thought of this and made for better provision given the unsuitability of the station for expansion. An obvious improvement would be the provision of a moving walkway - quite a common feature in facilities with such long distances to travel. Much trumpeted is the fact that in the refurbished station there is over 82,000 sq ft of retail space, most of it in the newly opened up street level facilities. A veritable shopping centre for newly arrived travellers from Europe although of much less value to the huge numbers of domestic commuters who have to walk through the full length of this centre twice a day. This is no simple task. With shops on either side and ticket offices and enquiry facilities also located here there are huge numbers of people simply waiting around, often in large groups, or others meandering around not sure where to go or going from shop to shop. The walk to the platforms at the end of the station requires determination and quick wittedness to avoid the confusion and crowds all around.

Much of this could be solved with the provision of an overhead moving walkway. The main way that travellers get to the platforms at the end of the station, which are at a raised level above the shopping precinct, is by using one of the two escalators which are at the far end of the station. What is needed are two or three additional escalators linked to a moving walkway which would be at platform level. This would remove many and probably most of the domestic travellers away from the shopping precinct and Eurostar ticket offices which are located within the shopping centre on the ground floor.

WHERE CAN I SIT?
Travelling is known to be a tiring business and it’s nice to be able to sit down and rest whilst waiting for a train. This common knowledge seems to have passed by the planners of St Pancras station. Probably the reason for this is to force more people into the numerous expensive cafés and restaurants within the station and maybe the planners were trying to deter less desirable loiterers from using the facilities. The end result is that there are hundreds of travellers who are not able to find seats and end up sitting on bags and any other seat high object that they are able to find. This lack of provision is equally true for those travelling to Europe as it is for the domestic traveller. There are some seats that seem to have been provided as an afterthought. The few that have been provided for the domestic traveller in the extension at the end of the station are located cleverly so that it is impossible, when seated, to see any of the electronic notice boards informing about the arrival and departure of the trains.

Other similar simple design faults are the inadequate size of the public toilets and the ground floor exits to the Underground. In both cases the planners simply have not allowed for the numbers of people using these facilities, and yet accurate projections must surely have been available to them.

FIRST CAPITAL CONNECT AND EAST MIDLANDS RAILWAY
The incompetence of the planners is well illustrated by several features of the new First Capital Connect station, which left its old home at Kings Cross Thameslink and is now located beneath the refurbished St Pancras Station. To get from the First Capital Connect platform to the ground floor of St Pancras requires either the use of the single lift, or the use of two separate escalators or steps. The first set of escalators consists of one escalator going up and one going down. Next to these is one stairway. In rush hour these facilities are totally inadequate and simply cannot deal with the numbers of commuters trying to make use of them. Long queues result. It is difficult to fathom how this situation was allowed to arise when the numbers of commuters who would use these facilities must have been known.

The lack of imagination of our railway providers is also apparent in the concourse area for the domestic services run by East Midlands Railway. When the trains on this service arrive they then need to be prepared for their return journeys. This means that no one is able to board the train until often about ten minutes or so before the time scheduled for departure. However, passengers for these trains arrive gradually, some getting to the station early and others arriving much nearer the time of departure. As very often there are insufficient seats on these trains long queues build up at the gates to the platforms with people waiting for the trains to be made ready for boarding. When eventually the gates are opened ticket inspectors check passenger documents thoroughly before allowing people to board the train. This causes these long queues to be very slow in moving forward, and there is a real danger that those at the end of the queue might even miss the train. Their boarding will certainly not be very relaxed. All this inconvenience could easily be avoided with a little new and creative thinking. The concourse area is quite large and could easily be separated into two sections. In a similar way to an airport, there could be a check-in on arrival and then passengers could be allowed through to a boarding area which would be nearer to the gates to the platforms. It might even be possible for some seats to be provided for those who have been checked in one would hope. When the trains are ready to be boarded there would then be no need for the long wait at the barriers whilst tickets are checked as this process would already have taken place.

WHY LEAVE WATERLOO FOR ST PANCRAS?
The refurbished St Pancras station is a prestigious landmark for London and Britain but it is a shame that the architects and planners failed to provide adequate facilities for everyone using the station. The logic of choosing a station facing north to house Eurostar trains that are destined to cross a major river and then head south is confusing. The logic of choosing a station that does not have the site size to adequately house both Eurostar and domestic services side by side is also difficult to understand. We now have to live with these decisions and the £800 million transformation of St Pancras. Let’s hope that someone can find just a few more £millions to put right, at least partially, some of the more glaring design failures.