Lifts, stairs and escalators

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter January 2026

Part 3 of Dick Dunmore’s look at accessing underground rail stations

By the early 2020s all was not well with the Cutty Sark escalators, and eventually all four were closed. The limited capacity of the single small lift forces most passengers to use up to 121 steps, or use the next station, above ground at Greenwich. The closures have led to several Freedom of Information requests and petitions, many of them apparently initiated without checking what had already been done. A response from October 2024 detailed the faults and ongoing investigations associated with each escalator, but could make no promises on when they will be working. In January 2025, it announced that all four escalators would be replaced. It seems unlikely that this will be faster than a repair.

Exactly why Cutty Sark’s escalators have proved so problematic is the source of much speculation. Unusual constraints? Hurried design? Private Finance Initiative construction? Private sector maintenance? Repeated changes between operating up and down, alternating the weight of standing passengers from side to side? Whatever the causes, there may be a long wait before all four escalators are replaced and seen to be reliable.

1999: escalators and lifts

Elsewhere, while lifts were necessary but not sufficient for step-free access, demands for them grew, with the irony that lifts are now being retrofitted to newer escalator-served stations in the same way that escalators were once retrofitted to older lift-served stations. Step-free provision was often combined with the construction of a new line, as with the Jubilee line extension to Stratford (1999), the Battersea Power Station extension (2021), or the Elizabeth line (2022), on all of which new stations had straight and level platforms and level boarding.

The 2022 Elizabeth line used some new tricks. Tottenham Court Road gained new escalators built both in inclined shafts (Elizabeth line) and in boxes excavated down from street level (Northern line). Lifts could be vertical in their own shafts, on an incline within the escalator shaft (Liverpool Street and Barbican), or even in an open atrium (Paddington). All the new platforms have steps and gaps small enough for wheelchair users. I vividly remember seeing a passenger deep below London in an electric wheelchair, crutches over one shoulder, steering with one hand and pushing his wheeled suitcase along with the other. This would have been impossible a few years earlier.

Dick Dunmore

The concluding Part 4 of this series will deal with the ongoing issue of the provision of lifts at stations.