Few things test a Londoner’s patience quite like a broken down escalator. You’re in a rush, just trying to get from A to B, when suddenly you’re trudging up and down flights of stairs with dozens of other commuters, or milling about waiting in a queue for the lift.
But what might seem like a minor inconvenience for some, can actually have a major impact on the reliability of the wider transport network.
Passenger flow slows, accessibility is affected and there is a risk of overcrowding — and that's before factoring in the cost of repairs and the impact of stations having to close.
Now, new data has revealed that over a quarter of escalators on the London Underground have passed their expected lifespan, which could be contributing to repeated disruption on the Tube network.
FOI data has revealed that 153 out of 566 escalators on the Tube network are operating beyond their shelf life (around 27 per cent).
Many of these ageing escalators are found at some of London’s busiest stations and on key commuter lines, including the Bakerloo, Northern, Victoria and Jubilee lines.
Elly Baker, Labour’s transport lead on the London Assembly, has urged TfL to tackle its ageing escalator crisis to avoid stations having to shut for long periods of time, which could cause major disruption for thousands of London commuters.
“Some of our Tube lines are incredibly deep, and without escalators, they really become unusable,” she told The Standard.
When escalators are out of action, and there’s no way traffic can be redirected, it causes serious delays to people’s journeys, and in some cases, forces people to abandon travel altogether, undermining confidence in the Tube network.
At Euston, two escalators serving the Northern line reached the end of their expected lifespan back in 2005. They were refurbished in 2016 but are still in service today.
Another 17 escalators are now approaching the end of their lifespan, including those at Holborn, Chancery Lane, Maida Vale and Warwick Avenue.
There were 7,598 escalator breakdowns across the network in 2025, excluding planned maintenance works. Waterloo recorded the highest number, with 450 breakdowns, followed by Tottenham Court Road (348), King’s Cross (298) and Victoria (277).
TfL says it looks to repair or replace a broken escalator as quickly as possible, but this can sometimes be a lengthy process due to the scale and complexity of the job.
Stations usually remain open with alternative routes or crowd-control measures in place, but in some cases services may be disrupted or stations closed.
We're queuing almost into the road to get into Brixton tube station @TfL #london #tubechaos pic.twitter.com/UIS8hG53N1
— Caitlin Fitzmaurice (@caitlinfitzm) August 3, 2016
Ms Baker says TfL has historically used an ‘end-of-life’ replacement model, where escalators are given a 20-year mid-life and a 40-year lifespan. These estimates help TfL determine when renewal work should be carried out.
But in recent years, she believes TfL has shifted towards a condition-based monitoring approach, where escalators are closely monitored to determine whether they need major maintenance, renewal, or replacement.
She believes this change has occurred because of funding pressures, after the previous Conservative government removed TfL’s operating grant in 2015.
Combined with the financial strain of the Covid pandemic, she said TfL has been left facing difficult choices about how to allocate its funding.
“TfL are operating in really difficult circumstances and they will always say safety is their number one priority and I absolutely agree with them.
“But they don’t consider enough how assets breaking down are going to affect public transport and the public’s confidence in the network.”
Escalator availability on the London Underground is around 95%, TfL says, even though they handle about six million journeys a day and parts of the network are over 160 years old.
But Ms Baker argues that escalator renewals have not been prioritised enough, leaving more units in need of replacement and increasing the risk of lengthy station closures caused by unexpected breakdowns.
Cutty Sark station, for example, was closed for 10 months from May 31, 2025 so engineers could replace all four of its escalators.
The £5.2m refurbishment project was labelled the most complex escalator replacement scheme ever undertaken on the DLR or the London Underground.
TfL initially thought the work would take about six months to complete, but the job ended up being much more complicated because of how the station was originally constructed.
The Cutty Sark was built using a "cut and cover" method. A large trench was dug, the escalators were installed with a crane, and then the station structure was built over them. This meant the escalators couldn’t just be lifted out and replaced.
Instead, engineers had to cut the escalators into seven separate sections, take them out to street level, have the replacement escalators manufactured in matching sections and bring each section into the station separately to be installed.
Teams were working 24 hours a day, seven days a week in the final six weeks of the project.
While planned station closures can be managed and their impact reduced, Ms Baker said unplanned disruptions create bigger challenges and come with extra costs.
“We’re moving into a stage now where things are just not quite under control and unplanned breakdowns will cause major impacts,” she said.
“It’s a bit of a butterfly effect. You can’t tell with things like this when exactly they’re going to break, or when they’re at the end of their life, but they won’t do it in a predictable way.
“Suddenly one will be gone and then all of a sudden you have a station out of action for months on end and that’s when you see the major impact.”
TfL says it carries out regular maintenance and inspections to keep lifts and escalators safe and reliable, with longer-term refurbishments and replacements carried out on a rolling programme.
The aim is to minimise disruption while improving reliability and accessibility across the network.
A TfL spokesperson said: “We work hard to keep our escalators in good working order, and this includes regular safety checks and a proactive rolling maintenance programme.
“Escalator availability on the London Underground is at around 95 per cent, despite heavy usage of around six million escalator journeys every day across a network that is over 160 years old in some areas.
“Inevitably, a small number of escalators have had to be temporarily withdrawn from service or are subject to increased maintenance and inspection regimes to ensure they can continue operating with acceptable levels of reliability.
“Funding for replacing these highly complex machines is subject to a prioritisation process which examines assets across the whole TfL network, looking at customer usage and the latest safety and condition assessments.”
