Frustrated locals have dubbed a that was completed 12 years ago a "road to nowhere" after learning that plans to finally open it won't include ticket barriers at one end. The £22million transport infrastructure at train station - one of the busiest in Britain, serving around 50,000 people a day - was originally pitched as a new route for residents living eastwards, providing foot access from Cherry Orchard Road. More than a decade later, with Londoners still forced to take an alternative five-minute walk around the station, appears to have partly backtracked on the plans, however - confirming that the bridge would not have ticket barriers on its eastern side when it opens in October.

Steven Downes, editor of the Inside Croydon newsletter, said: "This means the occupants of the series of new tower blocks built by developers [in the east] will have to cross over the bridge to the west to buy tickets or tap in before doing a U-turn and fighting their way back through the crowd if they're using platforms on the east." He told : [It's] utterly ridiculous, and will create real congestion during rush hour at such a busy station. Croydon Council really needs to insist that Network Rail put in the required barriers."

The bridge's long-running saga has been dogged by a number of impeding factors including intervention from the council and a lack of funding from Network Rail.

Croydon Council announced a £6m investment in the new footbridge, linking office buildings in the west to a proposed residential area east of the station in 2010, alongside a £10m sum from Network Rail and £4.4m from Transport for London.

The CEO of Menta Developments, which owns the residential area on the east, also pledged to build steps and a pavement joining up the two planned towers - with officials praising the project as "truly exciting" and vital to reducing local foot traffic.

The planned collaboration of multiple different bodies became an insurmountable hurdle, however, according to Downes. "When giving permission for the bridge and the development on the east side, it appears nobody thought it would be a good idea to give Menta a deadline for improving their link access on Cherry Orchard Road," he said. "It was all left open-ended."

The bridge - painted partially yellow in a bid to "bring joy" to passersby - was built in November 2012 and opened the following January, although without exits on the east or west, only providing links between different train platforms.

The western exit opened in December 2013, but residents in Menta's six new tower blocks remained without access until March 2024, when the developer said the bridge link was finally ready to be attached to the rest of the structure.

In last year's July meeting of the East Croydon Community Association, Network Rail said that the bridge now required significant maintenance work after more than a decade of disuse - and "dropped the bombshell" that the cost of installing a ticket barrier and staffing the eastern exit would be too expensive.

A petition calling for access to the walkway for residents on Cherry Orchard Road has reached over 1,000 signatures. "Passengers will have to make our way up the stairs, funnel through the narrow entrance at the top, walk across the bridge to the far side, and then queue with people coming in from the westerly stairs to go through the ticket gate there," it reads. "And if we need platforms 5 and 6, walk all the way back across the bridge to where we started.

"At rush hour, this will create a dreadful contraflow and crush at both ends, let alone unnecessary crowding on the bridge."

A spokesman for Network Rail said: "The original consent and funding was for ticket gates on the west end of the bridge. Should funding become available in future we would be happy to consider gates on the east end. For now, the bridge will still be a quicker route into East Croydon for people who live nearby.

"Network Rail is finalising plans for the bridge, which includes works to repair the surfaces and now introduces new balustrading and new partitioning to the public and passenger side. The full length of the bridge will open later this year."