St Pancras Ticket Barriers

One of the nice things about St Pancras station is that you can wonder around it freely, sit and have a coffee and generally feel rather cosmopoliton while catching your train in plenty of space and comfort. Unlike other stations there is plenty of seating and you are treated like a human being when boarding a train with a real person checking your ticket if you are travelling North.

Sadly that's all changing. All the seating on the upstairs platform has been removed so that people have to stand (or just sit around on the floor or the barriers as most choose to do after a long day) and ticket barriers are being installed half way along the concourse, halving the available waiting area and, once again, making us commuters feel like cattle rather than people, penned back against the escaltors as though we aren't welcome.

It's a real shame because this will completely change the experince of travelling North from St Pancras and make it feel just like every other station, simply a means of getting from A to B which people put up with rather than enjoy.

Above: The ticket barrier notice. No mention of why it is actually needed and no-one staffing the information desk to ask. The start of a depressing trend? I hope not.

P.S. If anyone from St Pancras wants to reply I'll post your response here.

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