Tube's first 'sloping lift' installed at Greenford, ending 68-year wait for disabled access

A revolutionary lift that runs up a slope on miniature rails has opened at a Tube station in west London.

The design, the first of its kind on the British rail network, ends commuters’ 68-year wait for disabled access at Greenford in Ealing.

It comes six years after plans to excavate a vertical lift shaft at the station were shelved on grounds of cost.

Transport for London said the new design, which resembles a funicular, was twice as efficient to run and cheaper to build as it did not require a shaft at all.

The design will be copied at two Crossrail stations when they open in 2018.

Lianna Etkind of campaign charity Transport for All called the lift “a fantastic example of a clever innovation that has opened up this station to older and disabled people”.

Greenford opened in 1947 and until last year had the Tube network’s last wooden escalator.

Work to replace the capital’s escalators with metal ones began after the 1987 King’s Cross fire, which started underneath one.

Isabel Dedring, the deputy mayor for transport, said: “The Mayor has set an ambitious target of ensuring more than half of TfL’s stations are step-free by 2018.