'Please use all available doors'

[Mallen Baker]

A question for any staff that care to comment.

At busy times, you will often see staff on platforms with loud hailers reciting a script that includes the exhortation to 'use all available doors'. In all the time I've seen this, I don't believe I've ever noticed it have any impact on the door that people have already chosen to queue up in front of. And yet the practice goes on.

The rationale for trying to get people not to bunch up in one part of the platform is obvious - is there any evidence that this practice makes any difference, and if not why does it carry on? Has anyone ever floated other approaches to try to achieve the same desired result?

 

[Nick66]

It's an attempt to spread the load. Most people who travel the same route regularly know which door they need to be at the right spot when they get out and most passengers in the busiest periods are regular travellers, so no, it doesn't really help.

 

[edwin_m]

I will often move to the next door if I see there is nobody boarding there but still a bunch of people in front of me. But I don't think hearing that announcement or not would change my behaviour. It's usually made when the train is already there, which is probably too late anyway.

 

[takno]

I'm not sure how effective it is, but I suspect it's directed at passengers who aren't so familiar with trains. In that situation a lot of people will just join a queue rather than go to another door in case the door they are going towards is an exit door, or somehow 'wrong'. From a personal point of view it sometimes acts as a nudge for me to look around instead of straight ahead - it doesn't matter a lot whether I'm a door or two away from the optimal one by the time I get off and it makes sense to not cram into the same tiny vestibule as everyone else.