Tactiles Melting?

Deepgreen · 17 Jul 2026

Today at Guildford there were messages being shown on the platform screens urging people to take care as the tactiles had become uneven.

Now, the irony is that the tactiles are there almost completely to assist visually impaired people, so displaying such a message is not much use to them, but I wondered if the plastic tactiles are deforming through heat/melting?

Is this a widespread problem with the more intense sun/heat this summer?

RailUK Forums

Benjwri · 17 Jul 2026

Deepgreen said:
Today at Guildford there were messages being shown on the platform screens urging people to take care as the tactiles had become uneven. Now, the irony is that the tactiles are there almost completely to assist visually impaired people, so displaying such a message is not much use to them, but I wondered if the plastic tactiles are deforming through heat/melting? Is this a widespread problem with the more intense sun/heat this summer?

I suspect it's more likely the glue/sealant holding them in place has melted.

Deepgreen · 17 Jul 2026

Benjwri said:
I suspect it's more likely the glue/sealant holding them in place has melted.

Yes, I should have clarified that that possibility was included in my assumption. No-one foresaw summer, then...

DelW · 17 Jul 2026

I don't think it's a new thing, the plastic stick on tactiles seem to have a limited lifespan regardless of temperature or other weather conditions. The ones at my local station have been partly replaced several times, as shown by the variety of shades of yellow / faded / dirt mix visible along each platform edge. Holes and splits are also quite common. Heat may exacerbate the process though.

GRALISTAIR · 19 Jul 2026

DelW said:
Heat may exacerbate the process though.

It most definitely does. It is of course the major weakness in material science terms - polymeric/plastics do not in general have good heat resistance.

Starmill · 19 Jul 2026

They often lift at the edges and sometimes can become a tripping hazard. Also they're often installed over coping stones which weren't flat to begin with, which inevitably leads to part of the plastic cracking or chipping off in a chunk, separated by a peak in the flags.

adc82140 · 19 Jul 2026

Funnily enough I noticed this last week at Basingstoke (I think). Looking very rumpled.

172007 · 19 Jul 2026

Same with the ones in the West Midlands. It does not look like glue failure but rather the strips are bowing / deforming in the heat causing the glue to fail at the edges. Looks like the short edge, that part butting to the next tactile plate.

styles · 19 Jul 2026

Is there a particular reason to be using plastic tactile paving? Apart from cost and ease of installation obviously. Seems like cheaping out at the expense of disabled passengers.

Benjwri · 19 Jul 2026

styles said:
Is there a particular reason to be using plastic tactile paving? Apart from cost and ease of installation obviously. Seems like cheaping out at the expense of disabled passengers.

Cost and ease of installation is quick significant. Bar melting, which I suspect was not thought to be an issue, there is no discernible difference in use. The difference in installation is huge though, you’re talking closing platforms for weeks at a minimum, likely the rail line itself too.

172007 · 19 Jul 2026

styles said:
Is there a particular reason to be using plastic tactile paving? Apart from cost and ease of installation obviously. Seems like cheaping out at the expense of disabled passengers.

You can look at the flip side of your accusation of cost saving.

The alternative is to use tactile paving slabs. To do that you need to cut a trench down the platform, dig out and install them. You can only do it when passenger trains are not running in limited time windows and you have to store, move and unload sand, water, cement etc and it also causes more noise than using glue.

The glued ones are far far far quicker to be done giving safer access to users in a much shorter time scale at the expence that sometimes a little maintenance may be required.

Hypotheticaly do you want every platform to have tactile paving within 3 years or 10.

yorksrob · 19 Jul 2026

Carnforth has finally got concrete tactile paving recently, and I don't recall the platform being closed for ages.

Maybe the sticky stuff is a stop gap until all can be replaced.

styles · 19 Jul 2026

172007 said:
Hypotheticaly do you want every platform to have tactile paving within 3 years or 10.

I don't see such choices as mutually-exclusive - that's a political question about how much we invest in disabled passenger facilities. Much like it's not one or the other with say the full HS2 route and East West Rail.

Krokodil · 19 Jul 2026

styles said:
Is there a particular reason to be using plastic tactile paving? Apart from cost and ease of installation obviously. Seems like cheaping out at the expense of disabled passengers.

It's cheap and quick. Something which became necessary after someone fell.

On platform 2 at Llandudno Junction, many of them have had slots cut into them because they buckled very shortly after being installed.

edwin_m · 19 Jul 2026

172007 said:
The alternative is to use tactile paving slabs. To do that you need to cut a trench down the platform, dig out and install them. You can only do it when passenger trains are not running in limited time windows

It's worse than that. All movements would need to be suspended on the line adjacent to the platform, as it's too close to the edge to work safely with trains passing.

Krokodil said:
It's cheap and quick. Something which became necessary after someone fell.

Report 01/2021: Person struck by a train at Eden Park station

Person struck by a train at Eden Park station, south-east London, 26 February 2020.

www.gov.uk

At around 19:05 hrs on Wednesday 26 February 2020, a passenger train struck and fatally injured a person who had just fallen from platform 1 of Eden Park station.

The person, who had impaired vision, moved near to, and fell from, the platform edge probably because his visual impairment meant he was unaware that he was close to this edge. The platform edge was not fitted with markings intended to assist visually impaired people.

ORR got very insistent about fitting tactiles after this, which probably also contributed to the use of the more easily fitted glued types.

andy33gmail · 19 Jul 2026

A practical option would be to stick down the cheap/easy ones quickly, then do it properly next time closures/works were happening nearby they could be joined onto?

SargeNpton · 20 Jul 2026

Remind me of a few years ago at Northampton (before it was rebuilt).

Rubber tactile tiles were laid at the bottom of the steps to the footbridge. They were accompanied by signs warning of a trip hazard - but ironically that warning was not in braille.

The exile · 20 Jul 2026

andy33gmail said:
A practical option would be to stick down the cheap/easy ones quickly, then do it properly next time closures/works were happening nearby they could be joined onto?

Which is almost certainly what will happen (although for “works happening nearby” read “”platform work at the station”)

yorkie · 20 Jul 2026

styles said:
Is there a particular reason to be using plastic tactile paving? Apart from cost and ease of installation obviously. Seems like cheaping out at the expense of disabled passengers.

On the contrary; it sounds like installation has perhaps been rushed in order to satisfy a demand to cater for disabled passengers as soon as theoretically possible, rather than as soon as reasonable/practicable for a longer-term solution that works for everyone.

styles · 20 Jul 2026

yorkie said:
On the contrary; it sounds like installation has perhaps been rushed in order to satisfy a demand to cater for disabled passengers as soon as theoretically possible, rather than as soon as reasonable/practicable for a longer-term solution that works for everyone.

If it were a temporary measure I may agree. But if it was installed a while ago then it should've been replaced by a durable solution by now; and if it was installed recently then it's clearly not fit for purpose as it's buckled so soon after installation, and in fact created new hazards by the sounds of it.

andy33gmail · 20 Jul 2026

The exile said:
Which is almost certainly what will happen (although for “works happening nearby” read “”platform work at the station”)

But you can be a bit more flexible? "All line closure required to maintain adjacent level crossing" etc

Undiscovered · 21 Jul 2026

Oddly enough, my blind friend can navigate, quite comfortably, around my local station, with or without tactile paving.
She is, however, utterly fed up with the constant messages about no tactile paving, slow announcements with over emphatic enunciations, lots of security warnings and, most importantly, last minute platform alterations

plugwash · 21 Jul 2026

Deepgreen said:
Yes, I should have clarified that that possibility was included in my assumption. No-one foresaw summer, then...

My impression is that while the UK sent huge amounts of our money down the drain in a hopeless attempt to prevent climate change, there has been a "head in the sand" attitude when it comes to mitigate the effects of the inevitable change in our climate.

I think this summer has been a wake-up call to many that things need to change, but it still takes time, and money, to actually change them.

Tactiles Melting?

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