Works in Waterloo: an improvement or just a cash making scheme?

The Evening standard continues with their objective questionable journalistic, er, standards and regurgitates yet another press pack, this time from Network Rail for a change:
Waterloo station turns trendy as Carluccio's, Corney and Barrow, and Thomas Pink open up on new concourse - Transport - News - Evening Standard

Just to put things in perspective:
1. On congestion, Network Rail have made it worse by making the underground concourses longer and shut outside of peak hours

2. The Eurostar platform has been mothballed for the last 5 year... with four EMPTY platforms -quite a disgrace.

3. Finally, are they going to pull down that hideous screen/wall between the concourse and the plaforms? There's no reason Waterloo can't be as beautiful as the Gare du Nord in Paris.

To me it seems the only goal of this revamp is to provide more retail space, in other words it's a cash generating scheme that adds no benefits to the commuters.


Previous posts on Water-loo station: 

• Waterloo plans mean no end of misery for commuters
• Waterloo: more Boris Bikes but still no sign of life for the Eurostar old platforms
• Waterloo plans mean no end of misery for commuters
• Londonist: What Next For Waterloo? 
• The Boris bike vs. the French vélib -unfair comparison?
• What if those who govern us had a long term view about strategic infrastructures?
• When will TfL realise they need more BorisBikes at Waterloo?

Restaurant review: Skylon

After some research for a business dinner close to Waterloo, I booked Skylon in the Royal Festival Hall.
The room was vast, gymnasium sized in fact, with a level of noise approaching that of a teenage basketball match, but the floor-to-ceiling windows opening up on the Thames make it spectacular. Shame they did not give us a window table as requested. The waiters are all in star-trek-like uniform, in tune with the retro-futurist location and name, plentiful and nice enough but they probably were beamed to another planet during main course as service got slower and slower.
The wine list is predictable but good, the sommelier was new and knowledgeable.
I haven't mentioned the food, and that's because it was passable. On the positive side, my onglet was perfectly uncooked as I ordered and like it but the smoked mackerel salad was some potted fish, swimming in light mayonnaise dressing and cos lettuce.

Final verdict: Skylon joins OXO in the category "you pay for the view, not the food".

Waterloo plans mean no end of misery for commuters

Read today on ThisIsLondon.co.uk: Rail bosses reveal radical revamp plan for Waterloo. I guess this means the former Eurostar terminal won't be useable by commuters trains before long: what a disgrace! (read Londonist: What Next For Waterloo? for more).

It's about time someone sorts out Waterloo: one of the businest station, the passenger flows are chaotic and platforms are too short for longer trains.

Also, the partition erected some 30 years ago (?) removes the perspective (see photo) and makes the station really ugly.

An underground concourse and the removal of the partition would be good news indeed, let's just hope we'll get it sooner than later. I would not bet on this though....


Tags: london, waterloo, trains, railways, UK, transportation, richmondtransits.blog

Londonist: What Next For Waterloo?

The short sighted running of the Capital's transport network can't be better epithomised by the fact plans are not finalised for the Waterlooo Eurostar terminal:
Londonist: What Next For Waterloo?

In the meantime, the station lies empty, with the decomissioning estimated at £100,000. Trains won't alight on the former EuroStation before December 2008 (that's in 13 months!) and "Options for the medium to long-term use of all five platforms are being assessed as part of a wider strategy for the upgrade of the station" according to Junior transport minister Tom Harris.

I'm sure the commuters will appreciate, especially since platform shortages are one of the main causes for delays on the Waterloo-bound lines...


Tags: Waterloo, trains, transportation, london, southwesttrains, richmondtransits.blog