Lifts, stairs and escalators

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter September 2025

Part 1, in the last issue, summarised how the private sector developers of London’s Underground had successively used stairs and lifts before beginning to add escalators.

Part 2 looks at the challenges of accessing underground rail stations

London’s competing private sector lines were merged into the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) in 1933, although they were not nationalised until 1948. The LPTB inherited assets up to 70 years old, built by multiple private companies, with many stations built with lifts but retrofitted with newer escalators.

1935: escalators

Moscow, in contrast, opened its first metro line in 1935, under a Communist government and hence in the public sector. Stations were to be to a high standard and some were deep, whether to be below the permafrost or for civil defence, with one 73 metres below ground. (St Petersburg’s Admiralteyskaya is 86 metres deep, and I have endured the five-minute ride from platform to surface.) The design was informed by London’s recent experience of the Piccadilly line extension to Cockfosters. At such depths, lifts were a non-starter, and separate stairs were pointless, so escalators were designed from the outset to cope with evacuation in emergencies, long operating hours, future lines, and demand growth, a very different starting point from London’s inherited commercial and competitive heritage.

Moscow began with a public sector plan with deep stations using proven escalator technology, but London inherited a sequence of stairs, proven lifts, and novel and retrofitted escalators, always with a focus on commercial return, and still uses assets up to 160 years old. However, nationalisation in 1948 did not in itself resolve the problems, partly because money was often short, and the focus was often on capital costs rather than maintainability or whole life costs.

When the network began to expand again, lifts were seen as unnecessary. The 1969 Victoria line and the 1979 initial Jubilee line to Charing Cross had none. The Victoria line is still not step-free at nine of the sixteen stations it serves, including Euston and Oxford Circus.

1987: stairs and lifts

Arguably the turning point came with the 1987 Docklands Light Railway (DLR), built within a fixed budget, using mainly disused railways not far above ground. The default access was by stairs up from street level, but these were supplemented by small hydraulic lifts, which were seen as reliable but slow. By combining straight and level platforms and level boarding across a small gap, the system introduced step-free access for those in wheelchairs or with buggies.

1991: stairs and lifts and escalators

The DLR soon began to expand. The 1991 Bank extension tunnelled down to new platforms below the already deep Northern line, and had new escalators back up the existing stations at Bank and Monument. The 1999 Lewisham extension, like the Northern line, passed under the Thames. The station at Cutty Sark (for Maritime Greenwich) is, for many visitors, the gateway to the UNESCO World Heritage Site including the Cutty Sark, the Old Royal Naval College, the National Maritime Museum, and the Royal Observatory and Prime Meridian. However, it is barely 100 metres from where the DLR tunnels under the Thames, and hence necessarily very deep. It was built within a box, with street, concourse and platforms connected not only by a small lift, and two sets of stairs, but also by four escalators arranged in two flights.

Dick Dunmore

Part 3 of this four part series will update the situation of Cutty Sark’s escalators and discuss the expansion of step-free access enabled by lifts.