Battle of the Barriers - update

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!

This from the Daily Telegraph on the Nobel Lord's plans for state owned East Coast Main Line...

...Withdrawal of the planned gating of York station in order to maintain the existing through access for non-passengers, while accelerating the completion of gating at King's Cross to deter fare-dodgers.

A sort of glass half full moment.

UPDATE: This from Paul Scott...

Er... are you expecting the SofS to win some sort of international prize for all this - 'Nobel' Lord?

The Fact Compiler apologises. A case of posting in haste and repenting at leisure.

UPDATE: This from King Henry...

Does the noble Lord realise that by citing the pedestrian route across York Station as his reason for abandoning gating he has destroyed EMT's case at Sheffield ?

UPDATE: This from a Mr Mallins...

The Good Lord has indeed shafted EMT over Sheffield, where with over 1100 objections to their application for Listed Building Consent, the City must be poised to refuse it.

By citing through access as the reason (not something that planners can consider for Listed Building applications) it must now be accepted that barriers are not a good idea elsewhere too.

Perhaps EMT should be removing their nonsensical scheme at Derby which is an unnecessary obstacle to access across the station, in similar circumstances to York and Sheffield. The place is often full of students trying to get to and from the college on the old Loco Works site.

And as for King's Cross, they will be an ugly and dysfunctional feature of a "World Class" station, maximum inconvenience to boarding passengers and chaos when they alight - take a look at EMT's St Pancras scheme next door.