From station to destination, on foot

I have written about this before – whoever designs PKP stations pays scant regard to the needs of passengers who use them. One major fault of many Polish railway station is the lack of pedestrian access via more than one entrance. Platforms can be long – up to 12 carriages long – and for passengers seeking to reach a destination located at the wrong end of the platform, a single entrance can mean a detour of many hundreds of metres.

A glaring example of is can be found at Poznań Wschodni station. There is only one entrance/exit, to be found at the extreme eastern end of the platforms. The result for local passengers is that destinations lying to the west of the station are difficult to reach directly.

I alighted from the back of my train from Poznań Główny, and, seeing the huge difference in distances, I consciously chose to risk trespassing on the railway line. So I walked 400m, crossing two tracks (checking of course if anything was coming along a long, straight stretch – it wasn’t), then reaching an access road linking the goods yard to the main road (my destination). In total, this walk was far shorter. The legitimate route would have been 1.5km, a full 1,100m longer, taking 13 minutes extra to walk under a baking sun. Who’s going to do that, when a short trespass can save almost a quarter of an hour!?!

The safety argument I'd put thus: the chances of being hit by a car as opposed to a train are an order of magnitude or two higher. (Compare number of pedestrians killed by cars and by trains each year.) If you know what you are doing, look and listen before crossing the track, you will be safe.

The designers who plan station layouts strive to achieve cost-cuttings which frustrate the passenger. This can lead to people taking risks, as happens daily at W-wa Służewiec, where office workers jump like lemmings onto the tracks to cross to the tram loop and save a long detour involving several flights of steps. Often they can see their tram about to depart and so are less mindful of the need to take care while doing so.

At Czachówek Południowy station, the lack of a completed underpass has resulted in passengers and station staff taking matters into their own hands, and the construction of a provisional exit at the southern end of the station has been built from piles of old wooden sleepers left over from the modernisation work.

If passengers can cross here, why not elsewhere? As long as barriers, warning signs etc exist, crossing a railway line is inherently far safer than crossing a road.

But there is hope. The recently-completed upgrade of line from W-wa Zachodnia Peron 8 has seen the provision of a long footpath alongside the tracks that gets passengers to destinations north of the platforms without having to take a massive detour. However, I suspect that the city hall had something to do with this investment, ensuring that rail passengers have easy pedestrian access to Expo XXI on ul. Prądzyńskiego.

Foreign exchange: don't get diddled!
[for the saps who paid £250 for €200 at the airport]

This time four years ago:
Defining my Sublime Aesthetic

This time six years ago:
Porth Ceiriad on the Llyn Peninsula

This time eight years ago:
Jeziorki sunset, late July

This time nine years ago:
Jeziorki sunset, after the storm

This time 12 years ago:
Rural suburbias - the ideal place to live?