Yesterday’s wind and rain led to slippery conditions on the footbridge and stairways down to the platforms at Reading yesterday. The floor tiles are very slippery when wet. Staff were doing their best to mop up the rain, but extreme care was necessary to avoid slipping.
The roof design is fine when the rain falls vertically, but it wasn’t doing that yesterday and I suspect conditions are even worse to-day. Wind and rain together are not uncommon, and perhaps the station design should have taken this into account.
Worth noting that the reason given for not installing non-slip floor tiles on the lawn at Paddington was because of its listing status. This argument doesn’t hold water at Reading.
Apparently the footbridge was not built as a closed-in space because if this had been done a whole series of extra fire and emergency evacuation precautions would have had to have been built into the structure. These would have significantly inflated the cost.
But the design is, at best, sub-optimal as winds and water can easily enter the space - from the staircase and escalator openings to the clerestories in the roof which only have a metal mesh in the openings. It may be that there were several compromises made during the construction to cut costs, for example the early artists impressions showed glass panelling on each side of the escalators and stairways down to platform level - these were not fitted.
The platform canopies are also much too high to offer much protection if the rain is falling at any angle other than the vertical.
It must at least be possible to find some effective design for windbreaks at the stairway and escalator openings from the bridge which does not infringe the fire regulations. At ground level the building is effectively open from one side to the other - the wind whistles through the gateline at the bottom of the main flight of escalators towards the town as well as eddying around the older gateline in the 1989 building near the Southern platforms now that the windbreak offered by the stairs to the old (now removed) overbridge is no longer there.
I feel sorry for those that have to work on the gates - especially on a cold, wet, windy winter's day...
It's a pity that the station is let down by such details. The basic concept is fine and it works well in reducing train pathing conflicts and the scrums on the platforms by spreading the load over more platform faces.
But it's these niggling little details which stay stuck in the mind.
