Avoiding the steps at Monument

Here’s something that we’ve been confused about for a while now, so much so that we emailed TfL, but they’ve so far not got back to us.

On the ‘Avoiding Steps‘ map that they have on their website, it is labelled that Monument station can be accessed without steps on the westbound platform only.  For a moment I thought this might have been a mistake – and it had been labelled so instead of Cannon Street which has a lift, but to the westbound platform only.

But a quick twitter chat with @tflaccess and it all became clear – it IS possible to access the westbound platforms at Monument by using escalators (and thus avoiding steps) if you go via Bank Station DLR.

Bank Lift on King William Street

A little known thing is that there IS lift access to Bank station – but only to the DLR part of the station. The entrance is ‘secret’ and is on King William Street – not part of the main entrance, where a vaguely scary sign suggests that is is for those who want step-free access to the DLR at Bank only.

But because of the layout of the escalators at Bank DLR it’s possible to come up into Monument station on an escalator on the westbound side and thus access it step free.

But we’d like to know (and this is what we keep on emailing TfL and they never reply to us)

Is the lift at Bank for DLR customers only, or if you have heavy luggage or a child in a pushchair, can you use it to legitimately access the westbound platforms at Monument as their ‘Avoiding Steps’ guide suggests?

Who wants to go and try it and find out?