As part of bespoke cleaning measures during the coronavirus pandemic, Transport for London is installing more than 200 UV light devices to sanitise the handrails on 110 London Underground escalators.
This follows a six-week trial launched in May which found that the UV lights improve escalator handrail sanitisation by at least 50%. TfL said that while the UV light had been proven to de-activate previous strains of coronavirus, Covid-19 was still too new for similar clinical trials to have concluded in the UK.
Almost a quarter of all escalators on the network will be fitted with the devices, which use the motion of the handrail to drive a dynamo and power a UV bulb that breaks down contamination.