Stratford Mezzanine Ticket Hall

I believe the gates are the ones that used to be at the entrance to the JLE platforms.

A staff member told me today that the stairs were now a resting place for winos, homeless, etc. Time will tell. Doubt the Westfield company will be happy with this in time.

The decal signage above the AFMs are of the incorrect type (as they show that notes can be used in the machines) and already we've had to deal with the fair few of people throwing their toys out of the pram over it.

DLR have finally paid for the installation of a Departures board, yet it hasn't been wired in. Could be an ongoing thing, seeing as there are orange cables all over the shop on the rest of the station that belong to them for that particular venture.

We have a problem with pigeons flying in, getting trapped, distressed, you name it. Just after the eventual opening of 'The Mezz' (as we call it), we actually had one die in flight, following a rather ungraceful impact with a pane of glass. It's more of a problem around 1100-1400, when the mezz is absolutely dead, even more so on a sunny or bright day. Not sure what the solution will be with that one.

We've got no leaflet racks, so we've had to hoard a whole load of leaflets in a box in the GLAP. As far as the GLAP goes: what seemed like a good idea at the start now turns out to be yet another poorly-thought-out waste of money. They've given us a heater, yet, the roof is not sealed and has a vent that blows cold air IN, so no matter if you keep the door closed with the heater on full blast for three hours, when you walk into the GLAP, it's still as cold as it was before.

The Bostwick gates had to have a job put out on them only the other day, even though they're brand new; they were jamming on one side, preventing us from being able to pull them across to close off access to the ticket hall.

As the gates are re-used (originally from the now non-existant Jubilee line gateline), the PODs have seen their fair share of weathering from direct sunlight. As such, during the day, nobody can tell what's the entry and exit, so we had to get a poster drawn up and place a board in the middle of the ticket hall to direct people to one side.

The step-free aspect of it all is a joke: The lifts from the mezz to street level are provided by Westfield, but this is located just to the side of the ticket hall entrance, behind the hoarding, and they are currently not commissioned (as they go up an extra level to the new footbridge). There are quite a few people who require the use of lifts who have exited through the mezz gateline in order to avoid the chaos that is the main gateline, only to find they've got to go back.

On the plus side: It's shiny.


Don't get me started. I was there the other day (before we decided to put up a whole load of notices on the hoardings): Westfield contractors by day, undesirables by night. Though the stairs are not the responsibility of London Underground (Westfield own them and it falls under Met Police jurisdiction), we still have to do our best to keep it clear. A manager has already emailed Westfield to ask them what they're going to do about it, as they're supposed to have security on site. Until Westfield formally opens, I doubt much will be done.


I admit I may be responsible for some of the confusion.

I will be posting pictures of the new Northern Ticket Hall when I'm permitted to do so, but it was finally furnished and finished at the beginning of the year; we now await for Westfield to hurry up and open and for the necessary bods to give us the keys to the place to hang up in our key cabinet following the formal 'handover'. In all honesty, I feel that the new ticket halls should have been opened together, following the opening of Westfield, for the sake of efficiency, instead of opening it bit by bit, only for people to find it's not actually much use to them yet, but what do I know?