Ickenham becomes the latest step-free tube station, raising total to 84
Ickenham station in northwest London, on the Piccadilly and Metropolitan lines, has become the 84th station on the tube to have step-free access added to the station.
The station now has two new lifts and improved signage giving customers step-free access from the street to the station platforms. Alongside the upgrades, manual boarding ramps will still be available to assist customers to get from train to platform, as well as existing tactile paving covering the full length of both platforms.
A bit of history
Ickenham station wasn’t originally intended to exist as the railway was built without a station at Ickenham, but following lobbying, a small “halt” was opened in 1905, with sloped paths down from the road to the platforms. The current layout, as a proper, if fairly small station didn’t emerge until the 1970s when the current ticket office with covered stairs was built.
Even in the 1970s, step-free access was not considered to be that important, and it’s taken until now to find a way of adding lifts to the station.
Today it’s still the 10th quietest tube station on the TfL network.
Adding step-free access
In summary, a new street-level walkway has been built above the platforms leading to a new overbridge and two sets of lifts to each platform. The alternative, of totally rebuilding the ticket hall to include lift shafts was ruled out as too expensive for a fairly quiet station.
A new accessible car park
The station entrance is on a bridge over the railway, and although there is a large car park next to the station, it’s at track level, so people have to walk up a staircase to get to the ticket office or walk along the narrow pavement on the road bridge. As that would be less than ideal for people needing to use the lifts, the station works will also include a small car park next to the ticket hall providing three wheelchair-accessible car parking spaces. That hasn’t opened yet, but a condition of the planning approval requires it to be completed within a year of the lifts being added to the station.
Other tube stations
Work is continuing to add step-free access to Osterley, Harrow-on-the-Hill, Sudbury Hill and Wimbledon Park, all of which are scheduled to become step-free later this year.
We seem to have gone through a boom in step free access thanks to Crossrail and the current Mayors step free access schemes but as tge list above shows we are rapidly running out of projects and unless something is done we will soon be back to relying on Access for All schemes which never seem to be finished!
In fact several of the Mayors schemes were stopped at the last minute while those announced with future dates have been paused
If £100 million can be found for walking and cycling then why not split this in half and reallocate £50 million for step free schemes !
If London is ever to get an accessible network then any chances that arise because of building schemes needs to be taken advantage of as occurred at Bank Station with the new Walbrock entrance .
From looking at photos of the new incline lifts at Liverpool Street Station I reckon these lifts could provide step free access at some stations which already have escalators from street to platform level!
Given that Ickenham is not used a great deal compare to other Met Line stations shy did Tfl put a lift in
Because accessibility is a right – and the people of Ickenham are as deserving of it as anywhere else.
Presumably this will be one of the last for a while, going by my own local station – prep works for SFA there began in 2018/19, unannounced and with no consultation (FYI, a planning application is submitted for each but they are exempt from public comments and effectively get waved through), then paused (pre-Covid) for ages, then stopped completely for months and have now been quietly abandoned. Albeit the pre-existing shelter, closed for the enabling, remains shut. A pity for those who needed it but given the crudeness of the proposed design, maybe also a chance to rehtink.
What are TFL reasons for maling Ickenham step free when this is one of the least used stations on both the Met Line and on the network