Question

Your consultancy is planning the layout for a city centre train station. This is a terminal station in which all trains have to enter forwards and leave by reversing out. (Examples of this type of station are King’s Cross or Euston stations in London, or Gard du Nord in Paris, home of Eurostar.)

Explain how you would establish the space, flow and activity relationship requirements for the train station layout. Within your answer identify the types of information you would need and how it would be analysed.

Answer 1

City centre train stations are those which are being situated in main cities and one of their largest terminals. There would be trains available for almost every station linked to the city. These are also be termed as the end or beginning of the routes because there are no further stations beyond these city centre train stations. So due to that trains enter in forward direction, have some waiting time and afterwards it has to leave the station in reverse manner as there are no further rails provided. It is important to establish the space and flow in these stations as they are the core part of the route lines.

Estabilishing the space and flows : estabilishing space is also one of the most important criteria in the stations and this is due to the requirement of space as cities expand with the span of time. It needs to modernise the station as the no of passengers keep on swelling day by day. The ticketing offices should be seperated at entrance so that the crowd is being reduced at platforms and different brides should be structured so that traffic should be maintained. According to modern thoughts the exit areas should be under ground so that the is no problem in maintaining the crowd among the passenger entering and exiting the station and by this the flow of crowd is being maintained peacefully.

The layout should not only contain the betterment regarding the traffic and crowd, it should also be focused on the look or beauty of station keeping the economic criteria in mind. In these types of stations good doms should be made at reasonable height so that there is natural light and less darkness would be observed in station which would enhance the beauty and reduce the electricity cost in the day time. Good operating system should be updated on the layout so that the coming and going of the trains are being maintained at the junction point.

Information required for layout : no ideas can be made for designing any structure or layout without previous information or perfect analysis about the system. Here in these cases proper analysis should be made regarding the no. of trains coming and leaving the station every day with their respected routes and the number of passengers travelling by the train. The information regarding the passengers leaving and entering the stations should also be known with respect to the time in the day so by help of that there would be obtained a rough idea of the traffic. The amount of land given for the construction of the station is also important by which the number of platforms and space occupied by the ticket counter would be decided.

For obtaining the cost and budget of the station, one should also maintain the records about the material and labour cost in that respective are and the cost of transportation to bring the materials. Budget and economy are also one of the important factors regarding the construction of any structure. So as mentioned above all the requirements for the space and flows for the layout and the information required for doing the previous analysis as a consultancy company.