First incline lift on London Underground protected by Avire light curtains

Light curtains from lift safety and communication specialist Avire are safeguarding the first incline lift ever installed on the London Underground (LU) network.

The former escalator at Greenford Tube station, on the Central line, has been replaced with an incline lift equipped with Memco Panachrome door detectors. The detectors flash red and green to give passengers a visual indication of when it is safe to enter and leave the lift.

“We use the Panachrome for two reasons,” explained Jon Spragg, lift discipline engineer at LU. “You’ve got the visual display as the lift doors open and close, which is great for meeting the Equality Act and keeping customers safe. But it’s also a very good deterrent at keeping people out of the path of the doors, reducing faults and ensuring efficiency of the lift flight times and passenger service.

“We utilise these detectors in the majority of our stations with lifts. From station to station we can have different environments – damp, cold, dry, dusty – and the Panachrome reacts well and is very reliable.”

The refurbishment project at Greenford fell into two parts. The first saw the installation of a new escalator to take passengers up to the train platforms. Then LU removed the escalator and replaced it with the incline lift.

Avire also supplied the project with LED dot matrix displays, which give passengers using and waiting for the lift information about its current position.

Transport for London plans to install four more incline lifts in two other Tube stations, at Farringdon and Liverpool Street, as part of the Crossrail project.