Channel Tunnel nearly at 30 - what Upgrades could be made?

[Trainbike46]

The terminal at St Pancras is in dire need of extra security and passport control capacity. It's routine to have queues stretching out of the designated queuing area along the entire length of the shopping arcade, and they've had to actually put up signs specifically asking people not to block access to the shops.

The problem is, in central London, it's not clear where you'd fit it in!

Those signs don't appear particularly effective, based on my last few journeys! There were lots of people who for some reason insisted on joining the queue way ahead of their departure (like, there people for departures after 9 who joined the queue at 7), despite many eurostar staff telling them not to do that. This leads to articficially long queues, slows everyone down and requires a lot of staff to manage the queue.

In addition to increasing the capacity for security and passport controls, some things that might be helpful:
- Return to asking people to check-in at least 30 minutes in advance (instead of the current 45-60 minutes)
- Some way of keeping people whose train is more than 60 minutes in the future out of the queue. Possibly separate entrances based on train, with a screen/sign suggesting people on later trains have a look at the shops/restaurants/bars and come back when there's 60 minutes left

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 Aug 2022 ==

-If necessary, have a member of staff ask people to show their ticket and send all those who are too early away, though hopefully this wouldn't be necessary

 

[XAM2175]

Those signs don't appear particularly effective, based on my last few journeys! There were lots of people who for some reason insisted on joining the queue way ahead of their departure (like, there people for departures after 9 who joined the queue at 7), despite many eurostar staff telling them not to do that. This leads to articficially long queues, slows everyone down and requires a lot of staff to manage the queue.

In fairness, it's a very normal human behaviour to join a queue if you see one forming for the same purpose as you've come to fulfil. Of course it's more instinctive than reasoned, but as you note a few wee signs aren't going to change it.

And as a counterpoint - I was at Glasgow Central a few weeks back while Avanti were having one of their routine meltdowns, and at approximately 1255 passengers were already queueing for the 1335 departure after the cancellation of the 1240. I wasn't travelling, but if I had been I almost certainly wouldn't have bothered to join in. Yet when boarding began at around 1320 it was accompanied by an announcement that all reservations were invalid, and at 1335 promptly the gates were closed for on-time departure even though many many people remained in line - so the people who spent the better part of 45 minutes looking a bit silly in that queue came out looking a lot smarter!