Great Western Coffee Shop

Network Rail are staging an exhibition from Monday to Friday next week about the changes at and round the station next week, so might be worth a look. See http://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/Press-Releases/KING-S-CROSS-RENAISSANCE-ON-SHOW-1652/SearchCategoryID-8.aspx

One change not mentioned will be the installation of automatic barriers on the mainline paltforms. Could be interesting if they persist with the 'now boarding' announcements only 5 mins before departure. Particularly on the narrower island platforms - imagine an arrival on platform 2 coinciding with a departure on platform 3.

Eventually, the entire platform area is a common paid area, and according to the planning drawings the barrier line consists of around 110 individual gates across the entire station. At the station front the barrier line is under the main arches, not at the end of individual platform islands.  So there ought not to be capacity problems with individual islands, AFAICS.

Looking at the main shed only there are around 75 gates of which 50 odd are allocated for exit, and with platforms 5-8 shortened to provide much increased circulation space.  The idea is that arriving pax will head off the platforms straight through the station frontage for the street or underground, but departing pax will enter mainly from the new concourse at the side.  The broad numbers give a far better ratio of barriers to passengers than Waterloo and Liverpool St, both of these seem to cope ok with multiple arrivals and departures.

Paul

Thank-you for that paul7755. That makes a lot more sense than sticking the barriers at the existing platform ends and might actually improve passenger flow over the current situation with manned blocks.

You wouldn't have a link to those planning drawings would you? I've had a web trawl and come up blank.