Current issues

Despite recent improvements, more attention needs to be paid lo the de- sign and management of those meet- ing places between two or more forms of travel which may be embraced by the term multi-modal passenger inter- change. Whether changing trains or from train to plane, plane to coach, coach to ferry, metro to bus or from any of these to car or taxi, the process tends to be regarded as the rough rather than the smooth of travel. This article, drawing on examples mainly from London and southeast England, but part/y from further afield, weighs some of fhe features and facilities which affect the interchanging pas- senger’s experience.

Charles Owen is Principal of the Tourism by Design consultancy and an established travel writer. He may be contacted at 25 Montagu Street, London Wl H 1 TB, UK.

Acknowledgment Research assistance for this article was provided by Carolyn Keen and Judy and Emily Adams-Dale.

Improving multi-modal passenger interchanges - an urgent need

Charles Owen

TOURISM MANAGEMENT June 1991

The process of changing from one mode of public transport to another may heighten expectation but, in the event, is seldom enjoyable. Whether within or between airport, ferry port, rail or coach station and thence, usual- ly, by one or more forms of urban transport, the experience often adds more than it need to the tension, tiredness, delays and inconvenience inherent in travel. If improved public transport is to woo motorists from their cars, an important consideration must be the better design and manage- ment of multi-modal passenger inter- changes, hitherto a relatively neg- lected factor.

A conspicuously bad example in London is the relationship between Victoria rail, metro, coach and bus stations, not to mention the other adjacent coach and bus stops, all labelled Victoria, the taxi ranks and the hard-to-find set-down and pick-up points for cars. If Victoria rail station, which alone handles 15 million inter- changing customers a year, tried to do less it might add more to the sum of human happiness.

Incongruously, every 15 min the Gatwick InterCity express spews its baggage-laden visitors, like spoon-fed creatures returned suddenly to the

wild, into the most crowded section of this over-busy Network SouthEast ter- minus. The sharper-eyed may discern exit sign and escalator to the first-floor air terminal, where taxis are some- times available, or else they find them- selves engulfed in the relentless mass of acclimatized denizens. From the rear carriage of the airport express, the London Underground platforms, and, along crowded streets, the coach station are a quarter of a mile away.

On the quieter side of the terminus, the arrivals by boat train from Chan- nel ports have more room to breathe, though the cramped Tourist Informa- tion Centre is nowhere near, the coach station is further away than ever and, if the metro and bus systems defeat them, only one of London’s slowest taxi queues can rescue them. What price the boat trains of yore which drew in alongside a taxi rank with porters, if not trolleys, at every door?

Rail-air connections

In large cities, passenger interchange is more than just the transfer of pas- sengers around adjoining facilities, and suburban rail networks joined together or extended can sometimes provide the readiest and least costly

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‘Airports are in the van of improved design of passenger interchanges’

means of connecting or through travel. Brussels is one capital under which mainline trains have long run from one side to the other with heart- of-city stops en route, while in London the new Snow Hill or Thameslink route (Kings Cross - Blackfriars - London Bridge) is a move in the right direction, augmenting the more peripheral but increasingly useful West London line.

From Waterloo, a proposed ter- minal for Channel Tunnel expresses, a rail link exists most of the way (via Feltham) to Heathrow, where it could share the station for the intended Heathrow-Paddington link. The Feltham spur, besides also accommo- dating Heathrow-Clapham Junction- Gatwick expresses, would enable Heathrow to become a main stop on direct Channel Tunnel services be- tween the European mainland and (via Reading) Birmingham and South Wales.

Meanwhile, to facilitate other trans- London pedestrian flows, a leaf could be taken out of Manchester’s new Metrolink programme whereby on- street trams, with short below-surface stretches of line under busy intersec- tions, will be worked also along lightly used stretches of British Rail (BR), thus providing a measure of integrated one-mode through travel where inter- change delays and discomforts former- ly prevailed.

In London, reinstatement of the Kingsway tram tunnel and the tram lines across Westminster Bridge would allow environment-friendly through running by tram from Kings Cross to Waterloo at a fraction of the cost of a new equivalent underground rail ser- vice. Trams as a primary means of urban transport, whether on-street or on dedicated ‘light railway’ track, are much in vogue in continental Europe, the system in Rotterdam being one of the better near-UK examples.

More widely, an important influ- ence in recent years on the design of self-contained passenger interchanges has been the highly effective disabled people’s lobby. The slogan ‘Access for All’, avoiding the appearance of spe- cial pleading, has encouraged progres- sive transport authorities to reduce inter-mode walking distances, shorten

queues, clarify signing and eliminate or by-pass such impediments to wheeled accessories, invalid chairs and baggage trolleys as fixed steps and stairways.

One little-heeded conversion to these standards is Portsmouth Har- bour station which now has effortless interchange between train, Isle of Wight and Gosport ferries, taxi rank, coach and bus services. Recognition would be greater if these facilities were housed in buildings of distinction and if the naval heritage tourist attrac- tion in the nearby dockyard made more of its ready access along level pavements from all these forms of public transport. Many tourist attrac- tions are less imaginative than they might be in facilitating and explaining access by public transport and in eas- ing the visitor’s way with combined travel and admission tickets.

Airport design

Airports are in the van of improved design of passenger interchanges. Effi- ciently integrated mainline rail sta- tions are to be found at Gatwick and Birmingham and, overseas, at Brus- sels, Amsterdam and Zurich, among others. Connections by coach and bus could often, however, be better orga- nized, even Heathrow’s Terminal Four, a model otherwise of intelligent design, being less than perfect in this respect. What lessons may be learned from a study of this facility?

First, clearly, in both mood and method Terminal Four, puts passen- ger care high on its list of priorities. With a throughput of eight million passengers a year, mostly on British Airways’ intercontinental flights and on its Paris, Amsterdam and Athens routes, this amounts to a lot of care. The amenities in this terminal’s pas- senger areas are well presented and, to reduce footwork, many are dupli- cated.

On the open gate principle, with no holding lounges at the piers, departing passengers can enjoy the main lounge until their aircraft are ready for board- ing. The 17 gates line a concourse half-a-mile long but with entry from the lounge at the central point and travolators to save much of the walk-

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After being accepted for a particular sailing, these travellers are held in a departure lounge until a local bus is ready to take them and their belong- ings to their ship’s gangway.

These ‘courtesy’ buses no doubt suit the operators’ arrangements but to passengers with baggage they merely add one more stage to what may seem already an overlong process of wait- ing, queueing, boarding, waiting and queueing. At Dover, the dockside bus could be obviated if covered walkways were provided from lounge to ferry berths - and failing a spur from the main railway at Priory into Eastern Docks, to hoverport as well as ferry port, long-distance coach direct to check-in point is obviously easier going than main-line train.

Side-by-side rail-ferry connections at UK ports serving the continent now survive only at Dover Western Docks, Harwich Parkeston Quay, Folkestone and Newhaven and, with the advent of the Channel Tunnel, most if not all of these, even good continental examples such as Ostend, may be doomed. Un- hurried foot passengers who enjoy docksides, fresh sea air and seeing where they are- going should enjoy today’s services while they can.

The Channel Tunnel with its fast, through high-speed trains between certain city centres should, however, be a boon to those who find them- selves within easy reach of the sche duled services. But the proposal to operate 18-coach trains threatens to congest interchange facilities at the terminals, just as the growing size of aircraft and ferries has lengthened the queues and, consequently, the delays at airports and seaports. Large con- veyances for several hundred passen- gers at a time at lower frequencies mav be economical for the ooerators

ing, the long-distance plodding associ- ated with large airports is not evident.

Among this terminal’s other attrac- tions are the absence of fixed steps, an efficient system for constantly provid- ing baggage trollies where they are needed, shops of high quality, easy approaches by car, taxi and under- ground train, and a cheerful unpress- ured atmosphere. On emerging from the deliberately low-key baggage re- claim and customs process, however, arriving passengers may find that the dazzling array of information and advertisement is not readily digested.

Airline and airport managements underestimate the anxiety that many passengers feel about choosing the best next step upon release from the airside cocoon in an unfamiliar air- port. It would help if incoming passen- gers, after checking in for their flight, were handed a leaflet with a layout plan of Terminal Four and some detail about onward transport facilities. As it is, information about coach and bus

services is poorly conveyed, the bays where passengers await them are draughty and uncomfortable, and on a dry, clear weekday morning airbus A2 to London was turning up, without apology or explanation, some 1.5 min late.

‘Lack of consideration will continue to be a feature until higher priority is given to the

Much of the credit for improved airport design and management in the UK lies with the British airports au- thority (BAA), and through its sub- sidiary, British Airports Services, the authority’s know-how has become a lucrative export. But there will always be blind spots, one of these being the gimmicky and time-wasting automatic train connecting Gatwick’s north and south terminals, the design of which precludes the conveyance of baggage trolleys.

All at sea

2 -1 ~~~ ~~~ but are not much help to the customer or to those who have to pick up the

design and management Dover Eastern Docks now has speedy, pieces at the interconnecting points. computerized check-in points for Lack of consideration for what be-

of interchanges’ outward-bound vehicles and, except at falls travellers before and after the peak periods, given the present fre- principal stage of their journey will quent sailings to the European conti- continue to be a feature-of everyday nent, advance booking, at least for life until higher priority is given by cars, seems hardly necessary. Foot far-seeing authorities to the design

SOUrCeS consulted: Chartered Institute of passengers, whether delivered by car and management of interchanges.

Transport, British Tourist Authority, Trans- or coach or by cross-town bus from BR’s InterCity and Network South- port 2000, British Airports Services, head Priory rail station, are less fortunate. East are setting new standards, the

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offices of British Rail InterCity and Network SouthEast, BAA, Centre for Independent Transport Research in London (CILT), London Regional Passenger Committee fLRPC1. Tvne and Wear Metro. Transoort &udies’Gioup of Central London Poly&h- nit, PTRC, Education and Research Services, Dover Harbour Board.

Some relevant publications include: CM Elmberg and D.A. Quarmby, lnferchanges in Public Transport, UITP, Brussels, 1981; David Pearman and Mervyn Jones, Trans- port Interchanges: Theory and Practice, Oxford Polytechnic, Oxford, 1985; Peter White, Public Transport: Its Planning, Man- agement and Operation, Century Hutch- inson, 1986; British Tourist Authority, First Impressions, BTA, 1986; Centre for Inde- pendent Transport Research in London, Railways for London, CILT, cl 987; London Regional Passenger Committee, A Change for the Better, LRPC. cl 987; Lon- don Regional Passenger Committee, Ab- out Turn, LRPC, 1990; and British Tourist Authority, Getting About Britain, BTA, 1990.

former with park-and-ride and rail- airport interchanges, the latter (in conjunction, where appropriate, with London Regional Transport) with urban and suburban interchanges in- volving train, metro and bus services.

The readier availability of travelcards and multi-modal ticketing is a blessing for the trans-urban traveller, as is the trend towards two- tier or cross-platform junctions where, say, train and bus may be separated from one another by little more than a single escalator or a few same-level paces. Exemplary interchanges involv- ing buses are to be found as far afield as Oceanside, SanDiego and Washing- ton DC in the USA, while nearer home one of the better larger-scale cases is in The Netherlands at The Hague’s Central Station.

In the absence of a well-disposed, controlling caucus such as an airport

authority, the key to progress in this sphere is the emergence of effective planning and coordinating authorities with powers to bring the various oper- ators together in the public interest. These may be a local government body or a passenger transport execu- tive, usually at regional or county level, or, where the infrastructure is not yet in place, an organization such as a development corporation.

In the meantime, there appears to be a dearth of generally recognized guidelines for the design and manage- ment of multi-modal passenger inter- changes. There must by now be enough ‘how to’ and ‘how not to’ examples of the species around the world, including the handful men- tioned here, on which to base a doc- trine, but only the systematic assembly of worthwhile case histories can tell. Who will take the lead?

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