North Greenwich station layout

This has probably been answered in various ways, but as much as many people would like to believe it, the station was not built with this in mind. No matter how much you beg Service Control, and no matter how willing the driver(s), we don't just get given trains into Platform 2 as and when to help with crowd-dispersal! Egress usually lasts between 50 minutes, to just over an hour for more difficult crowds, though with the ATO (when it does work) we are slowly starting to see these times reducing.

When the Dome was originally opened, passenger flow was a constant stream, much how it is if you visit the station during midday. It is also worth stating that 10 years ago, we did not have a mass number of high-density residential areas within a 5-mile radius of the station. The Dome did not have a mass egress back then like what now happens with functions in the O2 Arena, thus since the re-opening of the Dome in June 2007, we had to change our congestion and evacuation plans, because we found we were having to deal with 17,000 all in one hit (plus an additional 2,000 - 4,000 if there is a show in the Indigo, not to mention the additional numbers within the various other establishments and the cinema). The station layout now as it stands is poorly designed for this; we find that as a train terminates in the middle platform when an egress is in process, passengers who need to make the transfer for the Stratford service are often left fighting to get off the platform at either end (as the fixed staircase then becomes unusable to anybody who isn't going down to the westbound platform). There is no work-around. Even if the secondary ticket hall was built, it wouldn't have made any difference to how the station operates today.

The station is located within a 358 metre-long box sunk into waterlogged (and partly contaminated) soil. Early original ideas proposed that the station would be a two-level cut-and-cover box (like South Ken) and it was seen to be cheaper if the box did not have a 'lid', with all the daylight and quick access from ground level quite appealing. Although the original idea was strongly backed by London Underground to some degree, the difficulty of having to deal with the contaminated ground (and recommendations from British Gas at the time) meant the station box was then given a lid, with plans to perhaps make developments on top at ground level. If you can call a dinky WHSmith a 'development'. I don't know whether the additional cost of having to deal with more contaminated ground, more waterlogged clay soil and the cost of the initial coffer-dam in order to excavate the original box had anything to do with whether or not London Underground saw the potential extension towards the Royal Docks as 'worth it', but it probably would've swayed the decision.