12 ms·
Standing-only escalators can carry up to 30 per cent more people
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- unwind 10y agoThis is probably off-topic, but are they using different colors for male and female escalator users? Does it matter? They already have different graphics, but for some reason felt the need to make it really clear that there are different gendered people here, riding escalators? Very strange. Also, it doesn't seem to address the "total time for the ride", the minimization of which is of course the reason why people want to walk in escalators. That's the egoistical reason, to minimize overall throughput is perhaps somewhat less interesting to each individual. That said, optimizing the system as a whole for throughput is a good goal so perhaps it's time to change escalator culture!
- david90 10y agoya, I found that total unrelated either. Maybe they just wanted it to look more colorful...
- throwawayReply 10y agoThey could use the colours to indicate walking vs standing preference but instead chose to indicate gender for seemingly no reason. There should be three classes: 1. Wants to stand 2. Wants to walk 3. Wants to stand but will walk if lack of standing space. These might be in their simulation but it's not well explained. But the simulation isn't the main point, there was a real life study!
- justavoice 10y agomales are generally 10% larger than females, this makes the distribution easily visible.
- csomar 10y agoI wouldn't read too much into that. It seems they just wanted to make it more colorful.
- OscarCunningham 10y agoEven if leaving space for people to walk is slower on average it might still be better because it allows people in a hurry to go faster.
- liotier 10y agoOptimize for latency of one class vs. optimize for total throughput... Both are valid choices in different contexts... Welcome to network QOS management !
- SilkRoadie 10y agoFrom the foot of the elevator people walking will reach the top faster. However, navigating from the back of the queue at peak time to the start of the escalator is often time consuming. It would be interesting what the times were between those navigating the queue and walking up vs during the trial where everyone stands but the queue to the escalator is shorter.
- snowwolf 10y agoThis. Systems Thinking teaches us that optimising a small part of the system (walking up the escalators) can have unintended consequences (bottlenecks/queues elsewhere) that result in the time through the whole system to be slower.
- 4ad 10y agoPeople who stand and queue up do not block the people who want to walk. The queue leaves access for the people who are willing to walk.
- snowwolf 10y agoApparently you haven't been on the London Underground at rush hour. The escalator halls aren't long enough for an orderly queue to form on one side when a tube offloads its passengers.
- bboreham 10y ago
- smegel 10y agoDon't they turn standing room only when it gets super busy anyway? And when it's not busy...who cares.
- lmm 10y agoAt some busy stations (e.g. Canary Wharf during the morning rush hour) you'll find a big cluster of people at the bottom waiting for the standing side while there's space on the walking side. Obv. it gets dangerous if a trainload of people can't leave the station before the next trainload arrives. (Or more cynically, if they can achieve the same throughput with fewer escalators they'll save money on escalators).
- swearfu 10y agoYeah, but it's only dangerous because those people choose to stand there waiting instead of using their legs. It's their choice to be lazy and those create a danger for everyone else. We need to stop rewarding people who can't do anything for themselves.
- lmm 10y agoTrue laziness would be not building more escalators were they're needed. Basic safety isn't "rewarding" people.
- 4ad 10y agoAs a user of the system, I am not interested in throughput, I am interested in latency. Standing-only might have better throughput, but it reduces latency for the users who hurry and are willing to walk.
- tokenizerrr 10y agoWhat's going to happen to your latency when you have to wait before you're able to get on the escalator because it is already at max capacity?
- jbmorgado 10y agoThat only happens in very specific places at very specific times.
- notacoward 10y agoVery common places and times, actually. The tube, like everyone else, builds capacity for peak load. That means there almost certainly will be periods every day when the system is at or near capacity. That's when decreased throughput turns into increased latency via queuing. The only time that's not true is when the system has infinite queues or never approaches peak load, neither of which is a very useful assumption.
- 4ad 10y ago> That's when decreased throughput turns into increased latency via queuing. Only for the people who stand, not for the people who walk, because the people who stand and queue up leave passage for the people who walk to pass through. I can't comment on arbitrary metro systems around the world, but where I live this always happens. When demand is high, people who stand queue up for the escalator, but there is always enough space for people who walk such they are unimpeded. Very rarely demand is so high that people queue up for the trains themselves (only saw this twice in my life, I think), but even then, there isn't any congestion on the stairs.
- cauterized 10y agoThey're also assuming people are willing to stand tightly packed, rather than one on every second stair. I've never seen an escalator, no matter how dense the crowds, with strangers standing on the same side of adjacent steps.
- jobigoud 10y agoYes, the entire thing seem to rely on the personal room required for walking vs standing.
- andrewaylett 10y agoNot quite, because this is based on an actual real-life test. If people are currently leaving a single spare step when standing, but the people walking have to leave more than one spare step (or because there aren't so many, more than one step is left) then there's spare capacity that's not being used.
- lyschoening 10y agoAnd walking-only escalators can carry even more people, provided people walk on both sides. I'm in favor of building enough escalators to give everyone a choice. In an emergency situation everyone will have to walk anyway.
- notacoward 10y agoAs the article clearly stated, they did leave people a choice. Some of the tube stations have more than a dozen escalators, and only some were changed to standing-only. It makes perfect sense to optimize for throughput generally, but leave some lanes for those relatively few people who need/want to walk (TFA also discusses the difference in this willingness for escalators of different lengths).
- gaius 10y agoThis is an attack on our very way of life and must be resisted with all our strength.
- zelos 10y agoIt probably helps congestion at the bottom of the escalator where people wanting to stand cross from left to right and vice versa as well.
- jbmorgado 10y agoIn most places it's not a question of throughput, it's a question of allowing those that are really in a hurry to go faster, so it's not like societal normals should change due to this study conclusions.
- thaumasiotes 10y agoPeople who are really in a hurry are likely to take the stairs. There's no line for the stairs.
- crdoconnor 10y agoThe more people willing to walk the lower that % becomes. You could probably sway a lot more people to walk instead of stand by pointing out (truthfully) that it's an easy habit to get into to promote fitness. It would be a good use for spare advertising space not being used to encourage tourists to go see Wicked or Mamma Mia.
- sundvor 10y agoI was just about to comment: And so far, not one mention of the health benefit of walking (well, actually, ascending stairs) vs standing still. Then saw that you had it covered. :-)
- dade_ 10y agoAnother conclusion, if more people were willing to walk up longer than average escalators, there would be less congestion at peak hours.
- Tharkun 10y agoIndeed. Or just get rid of escalators entirely. Stairs are much cheaper and can accomodate more people. And maybe it'll dissuade people from running around with more luggage than they can carry. Lifts are of course perfectly acceptable for the diagonally challenged (wheelchairs, prams, whatnot).
- michaelt 10y agoOr just get rid of escalators entirely. I'm guessing you haven't used London's tube much :) Many of the stations are very deep - the equivalent of a 15 storey building. Changing to stairs would certainly lower throughput because that's a really long climb.
- dingo_bat 10y ago> Many of the stations are very deep - the equivalent of a 15 storey building I find that incredibly hard to believe. Assuming 4 meters per storey, you are saying that the London underground stations are at a depth of 60 meters. If true, that's really amazing.
- wflynny 10y agoFrom [1], "Hampstead is the deepest station below the surface, at 58.5 metres (192 ft), as its surface building is near the top of a hill". So the deepest is about 60m, but from browsing around, it seems many are at least 40m deep. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_infrastructure#Stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_infrastruct...
- sooheon 10y agoThis may be true for TFL, but like they say, the results depend on people's willingness to walk, and desire for personal space. At peak hours/stations in the Seoul subway system, standing only would be a disaster. There are more than enough people willing to walk to completely fill the left side of the escalator. Everyone keeps up a steady walking pace while being essentially 1 person per step, so I'd guess it's at least a 30% improvement in throughput.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago> while being essentially 1 person per step I think this estimate is incorrect. The article demonstrated otherwise. Also, people are willing to pack closer together when standing than when walking (and when walking than running!) Walking does increase the overall speed, but the study shows it's not enough for the increased space required. At least for British personal space requirements. Similarly, when driving, you need a certain amount of time between each vehicle. Yes, you can pack in with <1m space between bumpers in a stopped traffic jam, but you need many vehicle lengths to be safe at speed. For each mode of transport, there is an optimal speed and packing density. But you can't change one (speed) without affecting the other!
- taejo 10y ago>essentially 1 person per step For this to be true, everyone would have to be perfectly synchronized, up to which foot they were currently lifting, so that the foot could go precisely into the space left by the person ahead, landing next to their other foot. If this is what's done, I'd like to see a video of it.
- dorianm 10y agoThat's what the Sao Paulo subway is like: only standing escalators and no stairs. But it's frustrating as hell.
- overcast 10y agoFrom the late Mitch Hedberg. "An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience."
- rlpb 10y agoUntil they open it up to fix it, at which point the escalator is temporarily a death trap.
- lambdadmitry 10y agoI find it interesting that most pieces on the topic consider only the throughput perspective while game theory seems more appropriate. People aren't homogenous "units of production/demand" as queueing theory suggests, there is a mix of incentives at play. Some people are OK with waiting in the queue and on the standing escalator, while others are in a hurry and really need a way to go faster. It is surprising that almost no one complains about dedicated mass transit lines on our roads ("we can increase vehicle throughput by removing them!"), yet most people (people in charge, too) apply similar arguments to escalator usage.
- throw7 10y agothis isn't surprising. most people are lazy and unfit. we should make it all walking-only escalators. yeah, that'll show'em!
- swearfu 10y agoAre they serious? It's faster for who exactly? The people who were already standing instead of walking? Why should the people who are walking care, they want to get somewhere faster so they walk, if people want to be lazy and just stand there then they can wait, that's the choice they made. This entire article and the time wasted on it is idiotic.