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Most passenger friendly railway stations in Europe… the UK has two on the list. St Pancras and Birmingham New Street. Oh dear.
Some of the passenger friendly station criteria are bizarre, with for instance a station that doesn’t need lifts or escalators being marked down over a multi-layered one. Does any large station still not have a “restroom” for wheelchair users, and why are two business lounges better than one? Finally, the benefits of competition are definitely subjective!
St Pancras does well in the chart, but all those shops mean a long walk to the trains, and the escalators either point the wrong way and/or are running in only one direction so getting for instance from the ticket office to the EMR platforms involves a detour and doubling-back.
The “most passenger-friendly stations” report is really just free-market-conservative propaganda – just look at the “other venues” that the authors have been published in according to their biographies! Hence the bizarre introduction of “served by multiple rail companies” (which ignores the fact that many of the stations included are served by private companies operating trains under public sector direction in a concession model) and the inclusion of “number of ride-sharing companies available” rather than actual local public transport links.
@Andrew S – pretty well all through stations are multi-level in the sense of needing bridges or subways between platforms.
I would be interested in the “passenger friendly” scores of the other 40 top-50 stations, indeed I can’t see the sense in not giving the complete list. And what is the measure of size anyway – passengers, train movements, acreage, … ?
The list of ‘passenger-friendly’ stations certainly uses some arbitrary factors in it’s rankings, making it almost completely useless! The 2 variables which puzzled me most are the number of train companies serving the station, and including shops but excluding kiosks.
Many American cities are now getting rid of parking minima. You just wonder how they would react to the parking maxima applied to commercial development in London – max 1 space per 1,600 square metres of development in central London!