French advertising giant JCDecaux owns the new 2,500 sq ft advertising display in London Euston - Eddie Mulholland
Passengers at London Euston have had to endure years of overcrowding, delays and cancellations played out in the garishly lit concrete box that passes for a railway station.
But even hardened veterans of the “Euston stampede”, as the mad dash for platforms that follows the last-minute announcement of departures is known, were stunned by the replacement of its main information board with a vast advertising screen.
The decision to swap the board, one of the most detailed on the UK rail network, with the 200ft screen – a move ostensibly aimed at reducing congestion while netting manager Network Rail millions of pounds – marked a new low in the eyes of many Euston regulars.
Their anger boiled over last week as torrential rain and a death on the track led to mass cancellations of Avanti West Coast trains, Britain’s worst-performing train operator, and left Euston perilously overcrowded as thousands of people crammed on to the concourse.
Passengers bound for Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh and dozens of locations in between peered at the four smaller screens that replaced the old board, desperately seeking out information on their disrupted journeys.
Above them loomed the 2,500 sq ft advertising display, still looping between ads for Canadian holidays, ITVX and the new Transformers film as the country’s busiest intercity station descended into chaos.
Another said the replacement of the departure board with the “hideous and overly distracting screen” was “one of the worst decisions ever made at an already poorly managed station”.
The most damning critique came in a social media post retweeted more than 9,000 times.
“Euston is easily, easily the worst station in Western Europe,” said Barney Ronay, a journalist at The Guardian. “It’s like being taken away to be machine-gunned in the woods by various mobile phone and soft drinks companies.”
Now Network Rail is rethinking the move to surrender control of so much prime space in Euston to advertisers, forgoing the ability to easily convey vital messages to passengers in the process.
Bosses are understood to have begun talks with French advertising giant JCDecaux, which owns the screen, seeking permission to display information at times of severe disruption on the West Coast Main Line, Europe’s busiest rail artery.
Known as the Euston Motion+, the screen went live in January with an ad campaign devised by Saatchi & Saatchi for energy company Ovo.
Unlike the new departure boards, which are situated on the concourse at right angles to people arriving at the station, the elevated screen – the largest of its kind in Europe – is unmissable for passengers entering from the street or emerging from the Tube.
A source with knowledge of the discussions said it was certainly possible to display messages notifying travellers of issues such as signal failures and trespassers on the track.
However, the sticking point in negotiations is likely to be the level of disruption required for Euston managers to take over the screen and the procedure for posting messages, especially outside office hours, they said.
Network Rail insists that the old departure board, which displayed details of the next 14 departures from Euston and timings for a further 10, was removed to smooth passenger flows rather than raise revenue from the deal with JCDecaux. Network Rail said the introduction of a similar system at Waterloo had already proven its effectiveness.
The company declined to put a value to the deal, but a five-year accord that it struck with JCDecaux in 2018 was worth £280m.
The new departure boards, which cost £1.5m, feature multicoloured, high definition screens in two double-sided banks, positioned so that the focus of passengers is shifted from the front of the concourse, close to the platforms, towards the centre.
Network Rail said the introduction of a similar departure board system at Waterloo Station had already proven its effectiveness - Tony Hicks/AP
That creates more space for people to reach their trains, Network Rail said, citing computer modelling. It said a survey of 84 people also indicated a 42pc jump in satisfaction levels.
Rail engineer Gareth Dennis said the station’s justification for the changes doesn’t ring true.
He said: “They could have introduced the new system while still retaining ownership of the screen. And what benefits there are really only apply when the station is moderately busy.
“When the concourse is packed these new pathways don’t exist and all they have done by moving the departure boards is put more obstacles in the way of passengers.”
Dennis was fired from his job at a supplier to Network Rail after his public comments on safety at Euston drew complaints from its then boss Lord Hendy, now a Labour minister.
Criticism has also been levelled at the relocation of escalators to the Underground from inside the station to outside its main entrance in another effort to manage customer flows.
Concerns are such that London TravelWatch, an independent transport watchdog, has warned that high levels of congestion at Euston are “putting passengers in danger”.
Passengers headed north on Tuesday, when Euston suffered another spate of delays and on-off cancellations, complained that the new procedures have made travel more complicated.
Muriel, a manager in the food and beverages sector who was heading home to Chester, said the new departure boards aren’t visible from the station’s main seating area or the cafes on its mezzanine level, and that she much preferred the old system.
She said: “Euston’s a relic of the last century with a big shiny screen. It’s quite impressive to look at but you soon realise that there are only four ads up there, and you quickly get bored.”
Grant Rowley, head of communications at a major sporting body, said he doesn’t object to Network Rail pursuing commercial deals provided proceeds were reinvested in the railway.
However, Mr Rowley, who is based in north-west England, said he was frustrated by Avanti’s constant cancellations and that overcrowding means he often has to stand throughout the two-hour trip back to Warrington even after paying more than £300 for an anytime ticket.
A spokesman for Network Rail said that Euston was designed for another era and inevitably required major investment and modernisation. The station opened in 1837 but was demolished in the 1960s and replaced with the current brutalist structure.
The spokesman said: “During times of disruption there simply isn’t enough room for passengers and we know this can make for an uncomfortable and unpleasant environment.
“We will continue to work with our train operating colleagues to make further improvements as well as developing plans for the long-term future of the station.”
Network Rail is understood to be studying initiatives to speed up boarding times in a working group that includes Avanti and Euston’s other main operator, West Midlands Trains.
One option under consideration would be to reveal which platform a train will leave from while it is being prepared, allowing passengers to head in the right direction earlier than they do now and reducing dwell times on the concourse.
Other enhancements are set to see the removal of more retail outlets to create extra space – a number of shops located on the concourse itself having already gone.
A UK spokesman for JCDecaux didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
