I’m sure everyone reading this knows how enamoured I am with Stratford and the Olympic Park; I’m sure you all know how much I like the Elisabeth Line too. I was up there once again, albeit on a wild goose chase. I had initially intended to head to Liverpool Street to explore that area a bit, but got sidetracked at the last minute (long story). After I had finished what I needed to do in Stratford, I realised I could just get the Elisabeth Line to Liverpool Street. I had caught a glimpse of it a couple of weeks ago, and it looked like one of those jazzy new areas of the metropolis with a lot of interesting things being built, so I wanted to give it a closer look.

The thing is, it wasn’t simply a case of just wheeling onto the train: the Elisabeth Line platform at Stratford is not step free. I must admit this strikes me as very odd indeed. We all know how new the Elisabeth Line is, and Stratford Station underwent colossal redevelopment for 2012, so why on earth isn’t the platform there completely step free? The Jubilee Line and DLR platforms there are, so why is there still quite a large step between platform and train for the Elisabeth Line? Of course, in the event it was just a matter of asking one of the station staff to get the ramp out; but even so I would prefer to be able to just roll on and off trains as easily as everyone else. Yet what strikes me as weird is, if TFL/London is capable of constructing all these wonderful new cable cars, tunnels and bridges, why can’t it make all it’s train platforms step free?