Great Western Coffee Shop

I'm hoping someone can help me to find a suitable contact.

On each end of the new Transfer Deck at Reading a plan of the Deck has been added with signage - including brail.

But the signage key states that the escalators provided on P10/11, P12/13 and P14/15 on the country end is DOWN to the platform.

When these escalators always work UP from the platforms - and more entry/no entry signs indicate as such.

I am concerned a blind or partially sighted person - reading the new plan signs - will go to step on the escalators, only to fall flat on their face.

I found a FGW customer host - explained to them the issue, took them to the sign and showed them the mistake. His response was 'the escalators are reversible by a key'!!

Totally failing to gasp the problem in front of him.

So - who can I contact to report this ?

Tweet Network Rail?

Here's a picture of one of the signs in question.   

Note the deliberate error in the title text, which appears on both the signs on the 'passenger transfer deck' - I wonder if the words are in the wrong order in the braille version as well...   Other similar signs at platform level do refer to the passenger transfer deck.

Presumably specified by the bloke who thinks the platforms have A and B sides, rather than ends...

Paul

I think this is less serious than it appears, though there are several mistakes in the maps.

• While those with physical problems avoid stairs, many people with poor sight find escalators scary and stairs more familiar and reliable. This is from the RNIB's advice on offering help:
  
  "Many blind and partially sighted people prefer to avoid escalators so if you^re approaching one, ask the person you are guiding if they^re happy to use it or if they^d prefer to use an alternative route. If there^s no alternative and the person you^re guiding is uncomfortable using it, you can ask that the escalator be turned off. ... It^s not safe to take a dog on a moving escalator or travelator so you may need to find an alternative. The dog might need to be carried if there is no alternative. Discuss how you will do this or indeed if it is practical."
  
  So the indication of an escalator only would suggest "avoid" to those who do fear them.
• When the map says "stairs down" or "escalator and stairs down" it may well not be talking about the direction of movement, but whether it leads to/from above or below. So the comment about the escalators being reversible is not so daft.
• The map is still wrong, in that it suggests no stairs at the "A" ends and has no way of showing stairs but no escalator (or at least not one for use going down). So it does not meet the the requirement of telling which way (A or B) to go to avoid escalators.
• Obviously the map was made by/for RNIB, with NR perhaps just providing a place and some money. There should be a process for correcting it, if that is important. However, I suggest that RNIB would be the ones to judge whether that is called for, based on feedback from the people it was made for.

Sorry about the lousy focus on the picture - I hope the symbols can still be made out.

Never use one word where three (or five) will do.

For "Footbridge" read "Passenger Transfer Deck"

Its not just lawyers that are paid by the word.

OTC

In recent travels I've seen lift signs (and audio announcements) that take me to the 'bridgelink' rather than what is quite plainly a footbridge.   

What's the point of it all?

Paul

I'm a lawyer and I say use clear understandable language - so I think this is sheer gobblebygook. Seems to me the problem lies in schools. Teach people to use clear simple language and use only as few words as are necessary.

Transfer deck is hardly a new term though. This 2002 report (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2134366.stm) uses it in the context of the building over Liverpool Street and Charring Cross. Maybe the next stage is a multi-storey building on top ...

Oxford and Didcot stations also have transfer decks in their development plans.

Does the transfer deck at Reading look like a foot bridge?  No.

Then to call it a footbridge would be misleading.  So what do you call it?

Overbridge?

Construct for make most excellent perambulation of peoples between platforms and exitings?

But what real people think of when the term foot bridge is mentioned is something like at Exeter St Davids, Derby or Tilehurst. Not Reading.

Only bridge specialists use the therm overbridge.

So, my second suggestion then?  :P ;) ;D

How about "upper level"? Or, since it's probably bigger in floor area than the rest of the buildings put together, why not "station"? But simplest would be "upstairs" wouldn't it?

Overbridge is generally well understood and upper level is fine in my book. But does the word footbridge automatically imply a limit to its size? Transfer deck sounds like something akin to the old transporter bridges as at Newport Docks.

I agree that 'footbridge' brings to mind an old-fashioned narrow bridge. The thing at Reading fits the definition of a concourse, I'd say, or the upper concourse if you wanted to be completely unambiguous.

Too small to be a concourse, methinks

Clearly an EU directive on this matter may be required.............. (or not).

Not! It appears difficult enough to get consensus in one language, let alone 25 (or however many).

Alternatively, to settle the discussion, we could introduce qualified majority voting on this forum, 10 posts qualifies 1 vote...

For the record, I should correct what I said earlier:

What the diagram shows is correct: P8/9 has two escalators plus stairs for each half, P10-15 have two escalators for the A end and one escalator plus stairs for the B end. So it does meet the limited requirement I inferred was behind its design.

However much discussion there is about the most appropriate name to describe things I suggest we all really know that we should use words like 'train', 'footbridge'. 'platform'.  It's just common sense isn't it?  I guess the people responsible for sign policy could ask a representative portion of the general public for the best words to use - a bit like they do in that naff Countdown programme to see how many people chose which answer!

Surely you mean 'Pointless'? One of the best quiz shows currently on TV.  ;)

Reading's "Audio Signage" or announcements are also wonderful to behold or rather listen to.

This a.m. two announcements were made simultaneously and cacophonously, one about safety on escalators (I think), another about a train departure, or something. You have to be good at parallel processing for this sort of thing.

Later, on the platform, with a large number of other waiting XC customers, I was pleased to hear a (single) announcement of a change of our platform...after the train had already come to a stand across the way.

If they manage the signalling as badly as the announcements..........

OTC

Of course you could cut out the unnecessary announcements about taking care on escalators, minding the gap between train and platform edge, not trying to board train until it's come to a complete stop, taking care to lock your car, being aware of stray luggage/not leaving your luggage unattended, not drinking too much alcohol and the myriad other things us older people took for granted you should or should not do without having to be told every five minutes..............................

Brings to mind the celebrated case of the judge who actually threw out a claim by someone who claimed they got burnt because their coffee was too hot with the comment of what else did they expect of their coffee and he wondered if they would have complained if their coffee had been cold.