Waterloo station refurbishment

Like many Londoners, I spend a lot of time hanging around at train stations. Not through choice I might add, but usually because I have just missed a train and have generated a 30 minute wait. I hate to think how much money I spend at the coffee bars, WHSmiths, fast food stalls, Boots and other stores that you usually find on the concourse. It's even worse when you find more expensive stores like Lush and Toko jewellery (Liverpool Street) and Monsoon (Waterloo and Paddington). And let's not even start on how they recently increased the price of a pee to 30p...

And yet hardly any have seating areas and things to pass time with - bar the shops and cafes which cost money. So I was excited to read the news headline today which said that £50m was to be spent on refurbishing Waterloo. I immediately bought a newspaper and was disappointed to learn that this money was not about making "the station experience" any better, but about converting the old Eurostar platforms so that they can be used by regular commuter trains. Apparently, the Eurostar platforms are too long for use without expensive modification (I guess they are "the wrong sort of platforms").

As a plea to the developers, do you think that a tiny bit of that money might be used to provide more facilities for the main inhabitants of the station - the passengers. How about a viewing platform so we can admire the Millennium Wheel and the river views, or some sort of quick visit art gallery, or a wifi hot spot area where business folk can stop for a few minutes and check their emails, or even a place where harrassed mothers can stop to feed and water their travel weary kids.