Great Western Coffee Shop

This week I have been going through Birmingham New Street every day. I will arrive on an XC service from Reading and then transfer to a London Midland service for the local leg of my journey.

At Reading, for example, if I was to arrive on P8A and needed to (for example) transfer to 15B then it's easy. Up the stairs across the over bridge and down on to 15a. Easy

But at BHM it seems to be be more complicated. It seems for some combinations of journeys you have to go through one set of barriers (to leave train side), cross the neutral zone, and then go through the barriers again to reach the other set of platforms. You don't always have to do this but for most of my journeys this week it has been the norm,

Has anyone else experienced this and think it unusual?

I hit the same thing on Thursday evening - arrived 5 and left on 12.    Went up the stairs and found I couldn't get across (at the "a" end).  So sent back on to platform, along to "b" end and could get across the bridge there without having to go out from ticketed area.    Not well signposted ....

Yes I have found this.  It started when they were doing the work and I naively assumed it would be OK when they finished.  It is very odd. 

Designed like thT to keep pax upstairs in the 'Lounge' areas rather than down on the platforms

With the added 'bonus' of circulating passengers past retail opportunities.

I'm sure it does, though some retail opportunities can be put on platforms - at least in some stations. But what were the alternatives at BHM?

I suspect the reason the design came out like that was much less cynical. Early in the design you ask yourself "where are passengers going to be waiting?", so as to work out what sort of environment to provide. In this case, you might well conclude that there is no point even trying to make the platform level the kind of place anyone would spend time by choice. Just providing enough space by modern standards might be difficult (and that probably goes for large stations in general). So you plan the layout, passenger flows (now a major factor in the design process), and yes, retail, on that basis. Though that may not fully explain some of the routings between platforms.

Platforms aren't wide by any means, so the more that can be held upstairs away from these the better IMHO