I am a member of the King's Cross design team . . . .
I personally, as a cyclist, lobbied hard to keep the cycle racks inside the trainsheds . . . .
If you want to park your bike in the trainsheds, . . . . then turn up a few minutes earlier for your train.
I wonder if you noticed my earlier post
here?
The strongest of my evidentially based arguments for a train-side public-facing summary display of departures was from a bike user's point of view.
I'm sorry to have to tell you that by turning up a few minutes earlier doesn't solve the problem. I'm also sorry to say that declaring that "I resent the suggestion" does not tend to solve problems. I wonder if we could perhaps be a little more constructive and analyse real-world situations with a view to increasing effective design, please?
Imagine (which as a cycle user in KGX you will find easy to do accurately), that your bike is in the racks on, say, plat 8, as in my picture in
post #246 of this thread, and you are intending to travel north on any of the long distance TOCs.
You could wait on the concourse for the platform to be announced and displayed. On a good day, that will give you 15 or more minutes to pass through the barriers with the other 300 or more passengers, walk 2/3rds way up plat 8 to your bike, disentangle it from its neighbours and unlock it, walk back down the platform to the buffer stops (one of these journeys possibly being against a flow of passengers & luggage and/or RG trolleys), then along the buffer stops to your allocated platform, load your bike promptly (if its an EC 225) or walk the length of the train if its an HST, then hopefully, walk to your seat.
Its all do-able. Just.
But in times of disruption, train turnaround can be under 10 minutes, and passenger announcements and displays will provide much less notice. Also, in times of disruption, the density of passengers moving onto platforms is much higher, more determined and likey to create static clusters at barriers and platform ends. Add to this the probability of an HST being allocated, involving the full "U" shaped walk to the racks, back to the buffer-stops, up to the 'van' and back to the seat. It cannot be done - I've tried and failed!
A solution for cycle users would be to enter the train-side of the barriers and reclaim the bike before the platform is announced, at say 20 - 15 mins before departure. Then whatever platform is announced, and whatever train type is allocated, there will be ample time to load the bike and find a seat with little stress or running. But the layout, as designed, doesn't permit this, does it?
No one (bike user or not) once train-side, can determine what platform their service will depart from. Unless you imagine that someone walks back and forward across the station, right across the flow of passengers, and patrols all 9 individual platform displays, back and forwards, waiting to see if the service they want has yet been displayed.
No. I don't have any reason to think that you or any of your colleagues deserve a kicking. Yet. But I do have reason to find fault and would expect any responsible officer of the design team to accept critisism graciously and professionally. I don't expect anyone of the design team to respond with resentment and self-justification.
I'm sure you have lobbied hard for something beneficial. I also suspect that it was within your professional remit to have been considering the needs of passengers and it beggars belief that you expect appreciation on here for having done exactly what any passenger would expect from a designer - considering the needs of the user. Anyway, that work may be reflected positively in your career development, without any consideration from actual passengers, and designers will award each other without any help from this forum or elsewhere.
But please remember that it is the mark of a professional to face critisism head on and to admit to omissions and to deal with them. And to deal with actual passengers. Passengers who may not appreciate or care for all the hoops you go through to change a station from one layout to another and perhaps don't care a jot about it other than its functionality. That is your burden! Not the passengers'.
So can we move on, please?
What adjustments and improvements will be made at Kings Cross in response to the experience gained in the last week? Will any changes be given the NR & EC spin of having listened to customers and stiving to give them what that want?
Or,
Will changes be described as mistakes, oversights and failures to model actual station useage?
I'd give an award to any design team who fixed errors and admitted to them.
I'd give a kicking to any design team who closed ranks and blamed the customer for not making more time to use their new facilities, requested or not.
Which do you want?
