Have you ever wondered which tube station has the most escalators? In good news we can now answer that question, and more, thanks to an FoI request last week which revealed all. We learnt that 89 stations maintained by London Underground have escalators, and we learned how many there are at each. Here's the Top 10.
1) BANK/MONUMENT (35 escalators)
That is a lot of escalators.
Also a lot of them are recent, like these escalators which were added during the expansion works related to the new Cannon Street entrance. They're numbered 29, 30 and 31, which just goes to show how many escalators there are. The FoI request only gives a total but if you go round with a pen and paper, or if you know where to look online, you can work out where they all go.
1-3: Bank junction to Central line 4-5: District line to Northern line 6-7: Lombard Street entrance (1991) 8-9: Northern line, north end (1991) 10-11: DLR west end (1991) 12-13: DLR east end (1991) 14-15: District line to DLR (1991) 16-19: Walbrook entrance to W&C (2018) 20-22: Northern line to DLR (2022) 23-25: Central line to Northern line (2022) 26-31: Cannon Street entrance to Northern line (2023)
There were only 5 escalators in the good old days of the Bank/Monument 'escalator connection', as depicted on tube maps. Then the DLR came along upping the total to 15 and the most recent expansion more than doubled that to 31.
Except that's not 35, we're four short. It seems likely that whoever complied the FoI request also included Bank's four travelators even though they're not technically escalators. It just goes to show, as we've said many times before, that you can't rely on the information in a TfL FoI request because it may have been compiled in a questionably opaque way. Whatever, in this case it doesn't matter whether it's 31 or 35 because it still beats the second placed station whatever.
2) WATERLOO (26 escalators)
That is also a lot of escalators.
There were 14 before the Jubilee line arrived in 1999 and that added another 10. Except that's not 26, we're two short. Again the discrepancy can be bridged by adding in the two travelators, convincing me that the TfL FoI operative has indeed included them too. It just goes to show that no matter how carefully you phrase an FoI request it can always be misinterpreted, or data can simply be churned out of a spreadsheet without it being what you wanted. Alas in this case it does matter because the third-placed station has 24 escalators too.
3) LIVERPOOL STREET (24 escalators)
That feels like a lot of escalators. The Central line only required 9 escalators so how has the total got so high? The answer is Crossrail which added 9 more between Broadgate and the Elizabeth line platforms, but even that doesn't make the requisite total, we're six short. The full answer must be that 6 escalators on the Moorgate side have also been included. It just goes to show that FoI data often isn't telling you what you think it is, so you should always try to check it before you believe it.
4=) Canary Wharf [Jubilee] (20 escalators) 4=) Tottenham Court Road (20 escalators) 6=) Bond Street (19 escalators) 6=) King's Cross St Pancras (19 escalators) 8=) Canary Wharf [Elizabeth] (17 escalators) 8=) Westminster (17 escalators) 8=) London Bridge (17 escalators)
Canary Wharf has a double labyrinth of escalators, 20 at the Jubilee line station and 17 more for Crossrail. It would take top place with 37 escalators if these stations were linked but they're not so it doesn't. Of the seven stations in this list three stations are served by the Elizabeth line and four by the Jubilee line, because newer lines tend to have a lot more escalators than older lines. For Top 10 purposes it's a shame that so many of these are joint placings.
The other stations with more than 10 escalators are Paddington, Victoria, Oxford Circus, Farringdon, Charing Cross, Piccadilly Circus and Green Park.
No station has 9 escalators, but every other number from 1 to 10 is present.
The most common number of escalators is 2 - there are about 30 stations with two escalators.
(OK, actually the most common number of escalators is 0 - there are almost 200 of those)
And only one station has one escalator, which is Greenford.
It used to have the last remaining woodenescalator on the Underground, but in 2014 they removed that, replaced it with an incline lift and added a new non-wooden escalator. It remains London's least escalatory station.
But this escalator is no longer there.
Further escalator FoI facts The least used station with escalators: Wanstead The most used station without escalators: Finsbury Park The only zone 6 station with escalators: Heathrow Terminal 2,3 The number of escalators beyond zone 3: 12
