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Why London Underground stopped people walking up the escalators

• vanilla-almond 11y ago
  Here is a photo of the escalators in Holborn station, as mentioned in the article https://www.flickr.com/photos/topaas/16557435918/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/topaas/16557435918/
  • envy2 11y ago
    I walked up and down those many times as a student at the LSE. It would've driven me mad if I'd had to stand; very, very few things annoy me as much as being stuck behind people (or traffic) moving unnecessarily slowly. While obviously not everyone will be able to walk, we should be encouraging more people to do so and certainly not slowing down those who are able and willing just to make more room for the lazy. I find it hard to imagine that the percentage of people who are physically incapable rather than just unwilling to climb an escalator is large enough to cause meaningful congestion.
    • tomjen3 11y ago
      Agreed, but even simpler they could just make the escalator faster. That would more more people per time unit.
    • Silhouette 11y ago
      It would've driven me mad if I'd had to stand; very, very few things annoy me as much as being stuck behind people (or traffic) moving unnecessarily slowly. Isn't this exactly the point, though? At peak times, there are significant crowds around the entrances to escalators at busy Underground stations, and those crowds hold everyone up regardless of their preference for standing or walking. The idea here is to avoid the crowds forming a bottleneck in the first place, or at least to reduce the delay if there are still too many people to sustain full throughput.
• sandworm101 11y ago
  >>The stand-on-the-left controversy is no exception. Harrison, Stoneman and their colleagues believe it could make a noticeable impact on congestion at some of London’s busiest stations, congestion that will only get worse as train design, frequency and reliability improve, as the trains get faster and the doors get bigger, and ever more passengers are dumped on the platform at a time. THAT is a very british approach. Planners know that a problem is approaching, a problem created willingly by infrastructure improvements elsewhere. But rather than address that spillover issue with money/time/new bricks, yet another code of behavior is to be enforced. The people are to shoulder the burden yet again. Heaven help the tourist in a hurry who gets an asbo for not maximizing the carrying capacity of tube escalators. I wait for the day the escalator stops and everyone stands motionless for fear of being ticketed. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyL5mAqFJds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyL5mAqFJds where shoddy architecture is answered by suggesting that things will be ok so long as only lightweight people enter the building. And i thought there was an obesity crisis? They've been telling us for years to keep moving and now here is a government agency telling people to stand motionless? I say encourage people to burn calories by running the escalators in reverse!
  • conistonwater 11y ago
    In terms of resource use, that is a spectacularly efficient solution. They are not "shouldering" a burden, they are using existing capacity to a fuller extent, which is just about the most efficient solution to any problem anywhere. It's cheap and gets the job done. Also, frankly, if you're unwilling to follow the local code of conduct, you deserve an asbo/death sentence/stern tut-tutting and disapproving glares.
    • sandworm101 11y ago
      It is efficient only when the escalator is running near capacity, not when the escalators are less than 1/2 full. I suspect that this experiment will result in new rules to be applied 24/7 no matter whether they are anywhere near capacity.
      • 11y ago
• thwarted 11y ago
  Considering that an escalator is one of the few real-life powerups available outside of a video game, not walking up it is tantamount to wasting it, both traveling up and down. Like getting Haste and then just standing there, or being able to Deal Double Damage and not hitting the trigger. I usually camp at the bottom, waiting for the crowd to disperse, then grab the powerup and use it efficiently.
  • harryh 11y ago
    If you walk while on the escalator, you spend less time on it, and gain less of an advantage from using it.
    • sandworm101 11y ago
      It depends. Sometimes the best time to speed is when something else is already accelerating you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberth_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberth_effect
      • OscarCunningham 11y ago
        I don't think this is one of those cases though. See Terry Tao's take on a similar problem about when to tie your shoelace: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/an-airport-inspired-puzzle/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/an-airport-inspire...
      • mjhoy 11y ago
        I believe that is specific to how rocket engines work. I once thought it applied to bicycles, but that must be some other phenomenon...
        • baq 11y ago
          it certainly applies to bicycles in orbit.
          • 11y ago
• delibes 11y ago
  I used to go through Holborn every morning at 8.50am and I could see them preparing the experiment a few weeks in advance. They placed people in all the corridors to count throughput. However, as I was changing from the Central line to the Piccadilly line in the morning, like many others I walked through the much quieter 'No Exit' corridor (against the flow of traffic) to avoid/alleviate the congestion in the actual designated exit corridor. I'm not sure if I was counted in their stats as a +1 or -1? Then they closed my local station anyway, so I switched to the overground. 5 mins more, but so much nicer!
  • jeffwass 11y ago
    "I walked through the much quieter 'No Exit' corridor (against the flow of traffic) to avoid/alleviate the congestion in the actual designated exit corridor." You guys who do that piss me off. I often do the opposite of you in the morning (Piccadilly to Central), which means fighting my way through or against all of you who are not supposed to be obstructing those of us getting onto the Central Line. You guys come off the central line trains in bursts, so when you're there, there's a lot of you streaming at once. And regardless of whether you go up or transfer to Piccadilly Line, I need to intersect through your stream (which I wouldn't have to do if you used the right Exit corridor). Intersecting through your stream has resulted in getting elbowed or hit with satchels in the tunnels not designed for two-way pedestrian flow. And usually the people that consciously decide to go through the No Exit corridor are more likely to walk quickly in a hurry, which only makes it worse. So observe carefully next time you do that, and see that you're causing inconvenience, and even some danger, to those of us coming onto the Central Line, all for the sake of saving a small amount of time for yourself.
  • lexicality 11y ago
    Please don't walk against the flow, it inconveniences so many people. :( In some cases it can half the throughput for a coridoor as people walking in the right direction have to slow down and merge into another line just so you can go past.
    • tomjakubowski 11y ago
• gus_massa 11y ago
  In Argentina we have a more complex protocol: * Outside peak hours: stand on the right part of the escalator and leave the left part for walking. * At peak hours: stand in both sides of the escalator. * At extremely peak hours: If most of the flux goes upwards, stop the downward escalator and walk on it (this is actually illegal)
  • Fargren 11y ago
    I've never seen someone stopping the escalator, but I have seen the stairs standing still with astounding frequency. I thought it was poor maintenance, but it never occurred to me it was flow optimization.
    • ino 11y ago
      I've seen escalators that at night stop (like go to sleep) if nobody is walking and start (wake up) when someone walks towards them.
    • ino 11y ago
      I've seen escalators that at night stop (like go to sleep) if nobody is walking and start (wake up) when someone walks towards them.
  • aurelianito 11y ago
    I used to turn on the escalator on my parents' house station when I was a teenager, sometimes even with people walking on top of it. Then they added a key to turn it on :(. PS: Acoyte station, A subway line, Buenos Aires.
    • WildUtah 11y ago
      If that happened to today's kids, they could just look up lock picking on Youtube and fix the problem. The internet makes life better. Again.
      • deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
• tenfingers 11y ago
  ... or, you could ask everybody to walk, thereby "quadrupling" the effective capacity. I've been in UK many times, and being able to effectively walk up all escalators due to the diligence of the people always impressed me. Coming from a country that doesn't have such respect for basic rules, it feels just wrong despite the gain of average efficiency.
  • joncrocks 11y ago
    I'd be interested to know if this was true. People walking have to keep some space between them, and people also walk/climb stairs at different rates. You can only climb the escalator as fast as the person in front of you, and them the person in front of them. It only takes one slow-poke to hold everyone up. So people not walking might in fact, on average, increase the throughput vs. all-walking.
  • fhars 11y ago
    More likely, that would reduce the capacity even further, as walking people need to have more space between them than standing people, in order to avoid stepping on each others heels.
    • kazinator 11y ago
      Capacity is ultimately a measure of many people are passing a point per second, not about how well they squeeze together.
  • stronglikedan 11y ago
    > you could ask everybody to walk That assumes that everyone is capable of walking on an escalator. I, for one, am not. I get vertigo, and am on the brink of a panic attack for the entire duration of my ride. I can barely step on one, let alone walk, particularly when going down. I do look for an elevator whenever possible, but there are times when one is not available and I have to work myself up to the task. I have to grip the handrail with both hands, and focus on a point on the steps themselves. I'm sure there other issues that people have - like being able to walk but not climb - that would prevent them from being able to walk. Therefore, it's best to have the option to stand on one side and walk on the other.
• stretchwithme 11y ago
  I don't think use of the Underground will increase by 60% by 2050. Mass transit will be a bad memory by then. When our driverless cars head underground, they will all be going at the same high speed.
  • ptaipale 11y ago
    Whatever the speed, they won't have the capacity that mass transit provides in things like London underground.
    • Silhouette 11y ago
      That depends very much on the design. Remember that at any given time, most of the tunnel in the Underground is empty. Most of the time you're waiting in stations is because other people are getting on or off, not you or your own party. And most of the stations you stop at (and travel slower before and after) aren't relevant to your own journey. A network of high speed paths with efficient out-of-path access for starting and ending journeys could in principle offer dramatically higher throughput than current mass transit on the Underground, even with individuals or small groups sharing private vehicles. The trouble is that the amount of time and money required to build that network underground would be staggering even under ideal conditions, and conditions under London are very far from ideal.
      • Symbiote 11y ago
        But the bits of tunnel that aren't empty are extremely full. A tube train carries over 1000 people maximum. But it also takes up about 1km of track before the next train (estimated since stations are about 10 minutes walk apart). We have 1 person per metre of tunnel. The platform is roughly the length of the train, 130m. A small cart carrying one person could be, say, 1.5m long, and take up 3m (very optimistic, I think). Now we only have ⅓ person per metre of tunnel. Let's say 200 people get on or off the train at a busy station. There's a train every 120 seconds. The additional space is slightly larger than the train (the platform). If it takes 10s to get off the cart, in 120s we can load/unload 12 carts. But they're smaller, so we can do, say, 75 in the existing platform space (130m). That's 900, so this bit isn't a problem. Maybe it adds up; I'm actually far to tired to continue working it out...
• ilzmastr 11y ago
  I've never heard "escalump" in DC, but I have heard and used "escalefter" many times. There was even an ad inside the metro about it one time: http://klaprothlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Tourism-to-U.S..jpg http://klaprothlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Tourism-to...
  • elicash 11y ago
    It was part of the same ad campaign (I remember it): http://farm1.static.flickr.com/71/201509778_6f81b468ac.jpg http://farm1.static.flickr.com/71/201509778_6f81b468ac.jpg
• markdown 11y ago
  > had gone to Hong Kong on holiday. Lau noticed that passengers on that city’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR) were standing calmly on both sides of the escalator and, it seemed, travelling more efficiently and safely as a result. Is this new? When I visited Hong Kong in 2011, you had to stand on the right and walk on the left. In fact, this was one of the things that caused a great deal of anger towards "mainlanders" – tourists from mainland China – who ignored such social conventions. EDIT: I just googled it and apparently the "no walking on the escalators" rule in Hong Kong is only a few months old: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/article/1853813/stop-walking-escalators-hong-kong-divided-over?page=all http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/artic...
  • deleted 11y ago
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  • lvturner 11y ago
    No one obeys the stand only rule, at least not anywhere on Hong Kong island that I've seen - so much so that it startled me to read it in the article.
  • idra 11y ago
    This rule is one of many that make Hong Kong better for visiting mainlanders and worse for the actual locals living there. For decades the escalators ran perfectly. Nowadays, it just takes one yokel with a suitcase to block an entire escalator, oblivious to the fact that there is no one on front during rush hour. Unfortunately, the HK population is quite shy and timid in general, and these things go unpunished. The rule is a sad attempt to make this situation the status quo. When this isn't happening, people walk on the escalators all the time. London is silly to take an example from this.
• dreamfactory2 11y ago
  It seems to me that the throughput on the left side is faster - and therefore even if it were more spaced out (not the case in rush hour when it is almost as crowded as the right side), the fact that people are moving faster and spending less time on it would make up for any difference.
  • edoloughlin 11y ago
    From tfa: An escalator that carried 12,745 customers between 8.30 and 9.30am in a normal week, for example, carried 16,220 when it was designated standing only
    • luchs 11y ago
      I don't quite understand how that works. Surely there wasn't a crowd of 3000 people at the bottom of the escalator when people were walking on the left? Where do the extra people come from?
      • mrchicity 11y ago
        Public transit in major cities is a set of complex queuing systems. If a station is slower getting people out, they will crowd on the platform and create "back-pressure" on the entire system as the crowd causes incoming trains to take longer to unload, people will see longer queues to enter the system so they'll be marginally more likely to take a cab or abandon their trip. So some of the 3000 people were literally standing on the platform, but many of them may have been new customers or time-shifted rides that didn't even exist before. All of this seems like a very micro optimization to eek out efficiency in peak throughput. The bigger macro problem is that transit is centered around sharp peaks due to inflexible work/life schedules. Moving everyone in London or New York around is tough enough, but doing it in a few hours each day is a nightmare and you have to massively overbuild infrastructure.
      • jon-wood 11y ago
        I used to use the station they trialed this in at rush hour frequently, and over the course of an hour I could believe 3,000 people ended up queueing for escalator space, which is compounded because people are trying to cross the standing queue to get to the right side and walk up. You've also got the flow of traffic from the down escalator doing the same thing. It sounds crazy, but Holborn really does have vast amounts of traffic in the morning and evening, frequently enough that they'd have to shut the gates until the platforms had cleared enough to fit more people in.
• frobozz 11y ago
  Capacity could be improved even more, without fuelling the obesity epidemic and inconveniencing those of us who prefer to keep moving . All they have to do is make walking compulsory on both sides.
  • icebraining 11y ago
    Yes, except the station has no lifts (they were replaced by the escalators), so people who can't climb stares would be unable to use it at all.
    • wcummings 11y ago
      How do escalators accommodate people in wheelchairs? I find it hard to believe they don't have elevators for disabled people.
      • frobozz 11y ago
        They don't. Only certain stations have lifts and not even all of those have level access from lift to platform.
      • fredoralive 11y ago
        Most of the Underground network is inaccessible, note the lack of access symbols on the map. http://content.tfl.gov.uk/standard-tube-map.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/standard-tube-map.pdf Until recently disabled access wasn't really considered. The Docklands Light Railway which started in the late 1980s, and the late 90s Jubilee line extension are the only fully accessible bits on the network.
        • deleted 11y ago
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      • Silhouette 11y ago
        Access for physically disabled passengers is a significant challenge on the Underground. A lot of stations still really don't have routine platform access for wheelchairs to some or all lines. Even those that do then have the problem of platform and train being at different levels and often having a significant gap between them when the train stops. Stations with suitable access are specifically marked on a lot of the maps for exactly this reason.
• sbuttgereit 11y ago
  Would this not be fairly straightforward to simulate? I see statements like: "and, it seemed, travelling more efficiently and safely as a result." and "His report prompted Harrison and her colleagues to wonder..." and think... they're guessing? They're going right to disrupting normal travel patterns of many people for a trial on nothing more than a hunch? Why not prove to a reasonable degree that this would actually work beyond the anecdotal feelings of a few employees before inflicting such a change on the public? Seems like they are just shifting the cost for finding out from themselves to the disrupted travellers. Even if over longer periods of time this proves more efficient, disrupting normal patterns for regular commuters will cause a lot of stress and disorientation; such stress may be a soft cost, but most commutes already suck. I guess when you're a government agency, it's hard to fail your customers in a way that matters to you.
  • roel_v 11y ago
    They did simulate. Thing is that you can only tell if simulations are correct by testing in real life. (do simulations for a living)
• faitswulff 11y ago
  Why not make the escalators smaller so they only fit one person at a time? Then they could have two lanes where they used to have one and standers would naturally block walkers.
  • hammock 11y ago
    That would work if everyone was the same width. Which they are not
    • faitswulff 11y ago
      I don't think your line of thinking makes sense. Escalators already account for varying widths of people. But on average, two people of varying widths can fit on an escalator. Just make the escalators more narrow so that, on average, only one person fits on the escalator.
      • hammock 11y ago
        Have you ever been on a singlewide escalator? They have both single and double in my city. Rider comfort does not scale down linearly. It's the same story on roads, a two lane highway is going to be much wider than half the width of a four lane highway.
        • faitswulff 11y ago
          Ah, so you're saying that two singlewide escalators wouldn't fit where a doublewide escalator exists, now? That's a different and more compelling argument, but they could still do it. Also, this article is about putting rider preferences second. I would include rider comfort as one of those preferences.
  • DasIch 11y ago
    Overhead. Two one-person escalators next to each other require more space than one two-person escalator.
  • massysett 11y ago
• IshKebab 11y ago
  I wonder why they don't make the escalators three people wide. There is certainly space for it.
  • Silhouette 11y ago
    Presumably there's concern about what happens to someone in the middle if they lose balance, drop something, etc. and either they or those behind them have nothing to hold onto to steady themselves. Some of the escalators on the Underground are long, and you could hurt an awful lot of people if someone fell near the top.
  • jedberg 11y ago
    It's dangerous because the person in the middle can't hold a handrail.
  • aembleton 11y ago
    They wouldn't have a hand rail to hold on to.
• codeulike 11y ago
  “From my point of view,” says TfL’s head of transport planning Geoff Hobbs, “the ideal train would look like a bread bin” lol I can see that being taken out of context.
• billybong 11y ago
  dthsrte
• nkrisc 11y ago
  It wouldn't be quite as large of a problem if people who were physically able would just quit being lazy and walk up the escalator, even if it is a bit of a hike. It's not like walking to the top of a skyscraper. You know what's faster than either walking up stairs or an escalator? Walking up an escalator.
  • deleted 11y ago
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• JoshTriplett 11y ago
  One thing the article doesn't analyze at all: standing on both sides improves total throughput, but how does it affect the individual latency for people walking up the left side? If the answer is "it's faster for them too", then tell people that and they'll be more inclined to go along with it. And if the answer is "it's slower for them", then no wonder they don't want to go along with it.
  • narag 11y ago
    Also the "faster for everyone" as a goal ignores that people that will go faster with this system is people that were in no big rush to begin with (so they took the right side), while people that wanted to go faster now can't. You take away something that some people wanted to give the rest something nobody asked for.
    • jschwartzi 11y ago
      But the metric is overall throughput, not latency. If they had bothered to characterize latency then that conclusion would probably follow. Since they characterized throughput instead, they optimized throughput at the expense of latency.
    • MaysonL 11y ago
      Consider those rushing left-side walkers: with left-side walking in effect, at peak times, they may have to wait a few minutes at the bottom of the escalator to get on, while their walking will save them 30 seconds on the trip up. Not worth it. 16,220 per hour, versus 12,745.
  • Symbiote 11y ago
    In some cases, the available space for queueing is quite limited. If too many people are queuing, so this mass extends to the platforms, it might not be safe to let a train depart. Anecdote: During rush hour, I was almost at the bottom of an escalator at Oxford Circus station, when a women a little ahead of me fell over, and the man in front of me fell over her. I pressed the emergency stop button, and blocked the way for people coming down until someone had helped the woman stand. Less than a minute later, a London Underground employee finds me on the platform and thanks me for acting quickly¹. He says the crowding at the top of the escalator — in a minute! — means the station has been partially closed "exit and interchange only". (Probably only for five minutes.)
• deleted 11y ago
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• mattmcknight 11y ago
  The math is the article is a little sketchy. "But a 2002 study of escalator capacity on the Underground found that on machines such as those at Holborn, with a vertical height of 24 metres, only 40% would even contemplate it. By encouraging their preference, TfL effectively halves the capacity of the escalator in question, and creates significantly more crowding below, slowing everyone down. " It doesn't make sense that this would "halve the capacity" unless no one was walking. It seems that with a 40% stated preference for walking, it would be only a 10% loss of capacity due to preference differences. The description should really also include a description of how fast walking is compared to standing. Elevators move at around 0.3 m/s, people walk at about 4x that pace, so even doubling the spacing requirements would shave a fair bit off of that. I think this result is a due to it only being tried on one of three up escalators. By the assumption that there are 6 lanes, devoting 1/3 to walkers and 2/3 to standers can lead to greater efficiency if that more closely matches the actual preference distribution. By maintaining choice, and matching the available options to those desired by passengers one can optimize the results for both those who prefer speed and those who prefer not expending energy.
  • Silhouette 11y ago
    It seems you jumped from 40% even contemplating walking to a 40% stated preference during your reasoning there. The latter is quite a different thing and probably explains a lot of the discrepancies.
  • justincormack 11y ago
    However people stand on adjacent steps, but allow much more space around walkers, which is where most of the capacity loss is.
    • a3_nm 11y ago
      This depends on the ratio between elevator speed and (elevator speed + walking speed), compared to the density ratio between standers and walkers. I'm not sure what the outcome would be but it may be the case indeed that walker throughput would be less that stander throughput no matter what.
• cornholio 11y ago
  Brain fart time: how about a transit system composed entirely of escalators ? When you board, you take a slow treadmill that runs in parallel to a faster one, and that in turn to another, gaining 0.3-0.6 meters/second on each lateral skip. You do the reverse when approaching your destination. An treadmill running at 10m/s with pairs of people spaced at 0.5m has a capacity of 40 people/second, or 2400 people per minute, or one large train every 30 seconds. The average speed is higher and you no longer need to wait for a train. The only very small problem is the prohibitive cost with existing tech.
  • deleted 11y ago
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  • zrail 11y ago
    Robert Heinlein wrote a short story about this concept named The Roads Must Roll. He uses it to illustrate class differences.
    • narag 11y ago
      Is it pre or post *The Caves of Steel" by Asimov?
      • maxerickson 11y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Caves_of_Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Caves_of_Steel The Roads Must Roll was published in 1940. The Caves of Steel was published in 1953.
  • deleted 11y ago
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  • rtkwe 11y ago
    That doesn't really work for passengers who have trouble walking or standing like the old or disabled.
  • 11y ago
• fiatjaf 11y ago
  "Escalator" is an interesting name. Here in Brazil escalators are called "rolling stairs" (escada rolante).
  • Fargren 11y ago
    In Argentina they are called "mechanical stairways" (escalera mecánica)
  • ulfw 11y ago
    In German too. "Rolltreppe" = rolling stairs/steps.
• shabbaa 11y ago
  Tldr?
• oxplot 11y ago
  I think the main issue is the width of the escalators. Given that strangers don't like to stand next to one another (as per article's claim), two single width escalators would end up working more efficiently than one double width.
• everyone 11y ago
  This sucks. Now people who want to walk up and get a little exercise cant, just cus they are outnumbered by lazy sedentaries.. :(
• lmm 11y ago
  Too much modern public transport is slowing people down for the sake of throughput. Using the escalator this way adds capacity, but it makes journey times longer, much like the endless passages that have replaced cross-platform interchange on newer lines, or the decision to not connect Crossrail to Oxford Circus and force people to walk up, along the street and down instead. If the escalators are at capacity then the right thing is to build more. But that costs money, so instead we get "cheats" like this.
  • madeofpalk 11y ago
    > Using the escalator this way adds capacity, but it makes journey times longer. In the article they mention that on these long escalators, the majority of people would only stand anyway, so their time on the escalator is the same. For the minority that do walk up, even though their time on the escalator is slightly longer, because the bottleneck was significantly reduced they're not waiting before the escalator for as long which makes up for it. If you're increasing throughput, it means you're getting more people out of the station in the same amount of time, so their journey is quicker. > If the escalators are at capacity then the right thing is to build more. But in the article they demonstrate with diagrams that they're not at capacity because everyone is leaving the right sigh free for people to walk, but no one actually does. > But that costs money, so instead we get "cheats" like this. I'm not familiar with the geography of London's stations but I would imagine building more escslators is hard. Lack of space and added disruption while they build them. This is a great optimisation. I would imagine the cost-to-benefit ration would be heavily in favour of utilising the existing escalators capacity more efficiently, rather than building new ones.
    • Theodores 11y ago
      You are wrong about the bottleneck at the bottom, generally you can usually proceed up the left and walk the escalator without being delayed by the bottleneck queue of people wanting to stand on the escalator. Those folks are generally to the right leaving a relatively clear path on the left. So it is slow now for those of us that normally go at speed through the warren tunnels such as Holborn. There will be no fast overtaking lane on the escalators.
• Houshalter 11y ago
  Escalators are very rare novelties here. I never really understood their purpose over a regular stairs, but they are so cool on the occasions I see them. As a kid I was taught that walking up or down an escalator was rude, could cause injury, and defeats the purpose of the escalator. I think I was punished for doing it. When I went to DC, people were asking me to move out of the way so they could run up the escalators. I thought they were just being rude, but then I noticed lots of people doing this. I don't remember there being any signs or anything anywhere explaining this. It just emerged as part of their culture. Very interesting. I will definitely try running up an escalator the next time I see one.
  • CaptSpify 11y ago
    The purpose is for those with disabilities, elderly, etc. Walking up stairs can be tough for some people.
    • Houshalter 11y ago
      That's what elevators are for. Someone in a wheel chair can't go up an escalator I don't think. All multi story buildings are required to have elevators for the disabled, so the escalator is just a fancy extra.
      • aianus 11y ago
        I don't know why you're being downvoted, there are elevators with handicap signs at pretty much all subway stops in Toronto. If you're standing on an escalator it's because you're lazy not too disabled to walk.
• erostrate 11y ago
  "With the constant (and unsustainable) attention of staff, and three weeks of practice, they eventually became a little more docile [...] It’s like child psychology [...] So if you can’t tell them what to do every two minutes, how on earth do you get them to comply? [...] The handrail and tread of the escalator will be a different colour, and firmly planted pairs of feet will decorate the left of the steps." I wonder if they have tried to simply explain to commuters why it makes sense to stand on both sides. Treating people like intelligent and responsible adults often works much better than treating them like intellectually disabled children.
  • madeofpalk 11y ago
    Seems like a difficult thing to do in such a small trial. Because it's just one escalator (out of 7) in one station, their only point of contact is someone at the bottom of the escalator to shout "stand still". They hinted at in the article about if they were to expand the trial, they would be able to sell the public on the benefits of it, presumably through a larger campaign.
    • a3_nm 11y ago
      Hand out leaflets? People could read them while they stand on the elevator. :)
      • madeofpalk 11y ago
        Sounds like a great idea for a larger trial!
• Felix21 11y ago
  It's still faster for the person running up the escalator but for that luxury, we are sacrificing half the capacity of the escalator. Having another row of people on the left means the overall capacity increases and everyone moves faster but I always walk up the stairs and this won't benefit me one bit. Everyone else wins. Standing when I'm in a rush can never be faster than walking up the escalator.
  • rmvt 11y ago
    i figure it's not a luxury. people walk slowly inside the stations. escalator or no escalator. platforms are ridiculously small. i avoid taking the underground when i'm commuting to work because it's just hell. walking up the escalator is the one time i feel i'm actually going places (when i'm commuting). this would be acceptable if the rest of the journey wasn't just miserable. now they set out to make the journey 100% miserable. thanks tfl... why doesn't tfl try and improve the stations instead of coming up with this crap? i hate to sound like some sort of hillbilly but hey, if everyone walks up the escalator the throughput is even greater! another one: if you close down one station for a whole year, why not improve the platforms by making them bigger? in fact, you close down the station for a year and when you open it again the works are not even close to being done! fantastic! /rant
• kazinator 11y ago
  The solution is to actually have a full escalator, with an uninterrupted row of people on the left who are walking. That's what I see in Vancouver, and cities in Japan. The escalator is fully occupied, and one side of it is used for walking. It's surprising to hear that Londoners are just keeping one side clear, with few "takers" to climb up. Are they unfit or something? Respectful, though.
  • Grishnakh 11y ago
    How long are those escalators in Vancouver and Japan? According to the article, what they saw in the London escalators was that on the really long ones, not many people wanted to walk, but on the shorter ones they did.
• cm2187 11y ago
  This is complete b/s. I (too) often take the tube at peak hour, the left line is usually full, even in long escalators like the connection between the DLR and the central line at Bank. The idea that you have an empty left line and a packed right line is just not true.
• JupiterMoon 11y ago
  With many thing once people get used to a change their behaviour adapts in ways that the changer did not hope for. I suspect this will end with each person standing across both sides of the escalator cutting throughput.
• kazinator 11y ago
  Here is an idea. On long escalators, mark some of the stairs in a particular color at regularly spaced intervals. Those are the designated "rest stairs". Someone walking up who changes their mind (temporarly or for the rest of the ride) just finds a green stair, and moves over to the standing spot to let those behind pass. Rest stairs can be spaced reasonably sparsely so as not to cut into capacity too much or annoy people, and would only be featured on the long escalators where this is a problem. Maybe some people give up on the idea of walking up the long escalators in rush hour because they don't want to hinder someone who is faster.
  • Atheros 11y ago
    You can already do this. If you want to rest you step to the right. People walking continue to pass on the left.
    • kazinator 11y ago
      Not if the right side is completely packed with people at a peak time.
• dennisgorelik 11y ago
  I am surprised that in London right side of escalator was reserved for non-walking travelers. British drive on the left side of the road, so more natural tradition would be to stay on the left side of escalator and run on the right.
  • aianus 11y ago
    It's like that here in Thailand too. They drive on the left but walk on the right in two-way stairways and stand right on escalators. Doesn't make any sense.
  • chippy 11y ago
    What you will notice is that the up escalator will always be on the Left hand side.
  • robinson-wall 11y ago
    It makes more sense in my head the current way round. The traffic (people that are moving) is on the left.
• PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  TL;DR: Because many more travelers stand (on the right) than walk (on the left); catering to the latter potentially leaves nearly half the escalator's capacity unused.
• driverdan 11y ago
  What an unnecessarily long article. Scroll down to the second photo to see what it's about and skip the text.
• bluejekyll 11y ago
  And there goes my little exercise I get in the morning.
  • keithpeter 11y ago
    Get off one stop early and walk a bit? (Assuming this isn't a joke).
• droithomme 11y ago
  The article and its experts assume that "efficiency" is more important than culture and regimen without proving that is true.
  • VLM 11y ago
    Its also interesting to see the cultural turmoil people are willing to put up with just to avoid the implied worse alternative of flexible working hours or working from home occasionally. A quick "easy" but apparently utterly culturally unacceptable way to increase capacity by some 240% would be to work from home one day per week on average (or a half day every other week, or two days every other person, etc) and flex working hours such that the "rush hour" is twice as long. This would interfere with primate dominance rituals such as enjoying lower social class suffering, so instead we'll get something that merely redistributes suffering.
• donatj 11y ago
  I feel like I can't be alone in not wanting to stand next to someone I don't know on an escalator and finding the idea uncomfortable?
  • e12e 11y ago
    Are you comfortable standing next to someone you don't know on the subway? If not, you probably wouldn't be down there in rush hour in the first place...
• Terr_ 11y ago
  > In lieu of actual people, a hologram customer service operative will remind people to stand on both sides. Is this some sort of British slang thing, or did somebody make enormous strides in hologram technology when I wasn't looking?
  • deanclatworthy 11y ago
    No this is true. Many British airports have hologram people giving you instructions before the security gate and also when arriving.
  • kalleboo 11y ago
    They're cardboard cutouts with rear projection. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UarWbumn240 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UarWbumn240
• interfixus 11y ago
  I run up stairs. Hence have little patience but plenty of scorn for people who can't be bothered with a bit of locomotion on the escalator. Come on, I'm 56, you're half my age, move it! London Transport might have attempted a campaign along those lines. Lowest common denominator can be tiresome at times.
• pmalynin 11y ago
  Okay, in my city (Edmonton) we have the province's biggest University, that is mostly served by the LRT, and the university station in underground and hence has escalators. During peak morning hours, every single person walks up the escalator stairs and it is considered rude to stand in the morning. When the escalator is down everyone complains, because we need to 2x the walking now. Actually the fact that escalator is broken (i.e one is turned off and the other is closed for maintenance) has created a sort of inside joke, to the point where the escalator has its website to say if its working http://uofaescalator.com/ http://uofaescalator.com/
• ycmbntrthrwaway 11y ago
  In Moscow escalators are controlled manually. Each set of escalators has one operator. During peak hours operators manually instruct people to use both sides, constantly repeating instruction for new people that keep arriving. As soon as they stop repeating, people use only the right side as usual.
  • csydas 11y ago
    St. Petersburg has one operator for tri-lane escalators, and two for quad+ - Though maybe I just haven't noticed, it seems to me that people just naturally being the double bunching when capacity is high - usually the operators here just complain too much about people running on the escalator or sitting on the steps.
• ramshanker 11y ago
  Come to Rajeev Chawk station of New Delhi Metro, and you will see 3 rows of people on escalator: Left, Right & Center too. Must be almost touching the escalator's "Design Capacity"!
• Yizahi 11y ago
  Walking on an escalator is usually not very efficient thing - you cut throughput in half and will maybe save 30 to 60 seconds walking down, and only if you'll actually catch a train in that period. Walking upwards is even less efficient - saving 10-20 seconds by inconveniencing hundreds of people? Really? All this is comparable to people crossing streets on red light and afterwards walking slower than me crossing on green.
• slash213 11y ago
  Moscow has one of the busiest subway systems in the world, ranked 4th by annual ridership. There's a "stand on right, walk on left" rule, but at congestion hours passengers are advised to stand on both sides to make transportation more efficient, and it's been like that for decades. Reading a Guardian article on that feels, uh, really redundant? I guess we Russians have some experience in dealing with mobs.
• jjp 11y ago
  I assume the biggest improvement is removing the merging problem when people queuing on the left merge at the last minute and people on the right aren't being completely passive to the queue jumping.
• gaius 11y ago
  So in conclusion, present-day Londoners are lazy, and rather than encouraging people to move more, we should pander to them. Why not give everyone a Coke and a Big Mac with every Oyster card too? No wonder there is an obesity crisis.
  • palish 11y ago
    Isn't there anything more interesting to say? Resentment isn't too useful. I watched someone carry a wheelchair down the escalator a few weeks ago. No one could get past them, since the owner of the wheelchair was clinging to the person kind enough to escort them.
    • gaius 11y ago
      Done that myself a few times. In the present system, those who aren't able to walk, don't have to, and those that can, ought to be encouraged to, for the matter of public heath.
      • DanBC 11y ago
        Their journey usually involves walking to the station, walking to the escalator, walking from the escalator to the train, and walking from the train to work. That short escalator ride isn't a public health disaster. The lack of healthy food available to commuters is probably a bigger problem.
        • gaius 11y ago
          It's more subtle than that. The difference in attitude between "I walk when it's unavoidable" and "I walk whenever I can because we spent a billion years evolving to do it and living in a city is very bad for my overall health and wellbeing".
          • palish 11y ago
            There was a woman who became obese following a transplant of gut flora. Recall how much the idea of evolution bothers some people. Are you sure this isn't a similar type of situation? We seem to have evidence that obesity isn't always a choice.
• tfolbrecht 11y ago
  No Western person would be comfortable riding an escalator side by side with a stranger (aka weirdo in UK speak) for the equivalent of fifty to a hundred steps of stairs in a hot smelly subway so dirty your snot turns sooty. Standing on the right to allow others to walk up the left is not a technical optimization constructed by the impatient of the world. The real optimization problem is you're dealing with people and not frictionless spheres. X number of people walking up the left is faster than zero.
  • IkmoIkmo 11y ago
    I don't get how this is an argument for an escalator to or from a subway, that is completely disregarded while standing shoulder to shoulder and face to face while actually on the subway.
  • lttlrck 11y ago
    They just came from an underground carriage where they were almost certainly standing next to multiple strangers in a much more uncomfortable environment.
  • deleted 11y ago
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• legulere 11y ago
  Is there a reason why all escalators are 2 people wide?
  • MagnumOpus 11y ago
    It is the maximum that is safe (3 wide has a person in the middle with no handrail and if anyone fell, they would become a bowling ball). It is much more efficient than 1 person wide - two double-wide escalators offer more capacity than the 3 single-wides that fit in the same space, and likely consume less energy and cost less to maintain.
• usrusr 11y ago
  An interesting example of how too much uniformity can weaken a system. Where i live, there is a low but "reliable" percentage of riders who are just too rude to follow the left/right protocol. They are rare enough that during low-traffic periods, chances are quite low that you will be blocked while taking the individual latency improvement of walking. However, in periods of high traffic there will be enough of of them to reliably break the throughput-limiting lane pattern and congestion propagation will make sure that it stays that way until the next break in throughput demand. Never occurred to me that the occasional lane-blocker was an accidental optimization.
• cauterized 11y ago
  The only time I ever see two people standing still on a single escalator stair is parents with children or romantic partners - people who are comfortable sharing physical space with one another. Strangers don't share an escalator stair. So if you let people stand on the right and walk on the left, you're getting higher density and throughput, since you now have one person standing per stair PLUS people walking on the left. It's like turning a 1-lane into a 2-lane street.