In Price Tags’ quest to provide you with important information and to ensure you also win any urban trivia bet you may wager, we want you to hear this first-it is entirely okay just to stand on that urban escalator.
As written in the New York Times -“It may sound counterintuitive, but researchers said it is more efficient if nobody walks on the escalator.” All of this started when Paul Wiedefeld the general manager of the Washington DC metro alleged that the culture of walking up the escalator on the left hand side and standing on the escalator n the right hand side could “damage the escalator”. Of course Otis the escalator company immediately responded that this urban legend was wrong, and Mr. Wiedefeld then said standing side by side on the escalator would be safer and reduce the chance of falls. Otis responded that “its longtime position has been that passengers should not walk on escalators, as a matter of safety.”
Of course Transport for London had a trial in Holborn Station in 2015 with an escalator that is 77 feet tall. The challenge was to “change passengers’ behaviors and get them to stand side by side riding — not walking — during peak periods.” The results? Standing on both sides of the escalator reduced congestion by 30 per cent. But Sam Schwartz, New York City’s former traffic commissioner notes that getting North Americans to just stand on an escalator is challenging. “In the U.S., self-interest dominates our behavior on the road, on escalators and anywhere there is a capacity problem. I don’t believe Americans, any longer (if they ever did), have a rational button.”
This is exactly the same kind of social dynamic as driving your own car vs. taking transit. Too many people don’t give a darn about the bigger picture, they’re just in a hurry and they don’t want to have to “stand in line” with everyone else. So I have little hope that experiments like this are going to change any behaviours.
You should see people get cranky at the supermarket or the Starbucks when the line-up is slow!!!
If the option exists, I always take the stairs. They are usually empty. It is usually quicker, even when carrying my bike. We should really be encouraging more people to take the stairs.
This article posits a false choice. By choosing to walk up or down the escalator as opposed to just standing, people are being rational. They may be mistaken in their assumption, but they are being entirely rational. Whether it gets you faster to your destination or not, the perception of mobility is often more important than the actual fact.
I’ve seen similar articles on the real vs. perceived speed of Express Check-out lanes in supermarkets. At times, entertaining the perception of receiving faster service is rational, even though that may not in reality be the case. “Rational” just means that something is based on logic or reason. There’s no caveat that says that logic or reason has to be sound or factually correct.
Will there be digital signs telling people when peak periods are? If there are 2 people standing am I allowed to walk past them. What about 5, 10, 15? When is it okay to walk and when not?
Personally I find standing on an escalator is weird. To me it is the embodiment of a society that prefers never to have to move their feet. Walk left, stand right seems entirely logical to give people choice. Not everything is about maximum efficiency.
It’s obvious that the throughput of escalators is improved when people walk on them. The only problem, which was the circumstance in the study, is when 95% of people choose to stand instead of walk, to the point where they form a crowd at the base of the elevator. If you really cared about maximizing the efficiency of escalators you would encourage more people to walk, not make it impossible for anyone to do so. I doubt that the proportion of commuters too lazy to walk is the same in each metro, so the tube situation would not be universally applicable.
The “danger” of walking on escalators is miniscule compared to the millions of early deaths caused by the soaring rates of cardiovascular disease due to the obesity epidemic, which is compounded by a sedentary lifestyle. Is walking up escalators, where the stairs themselves are doing most of the work for you already, really such a struggle? If you are young and able-bodied and it *is* a struggle, isn’t that more reason to take them to improve your health?
*deleted as per editorial policy.
Good point.
The inefficiency does not arise from the act of walking up the escalator (which is inherently faster for the individual).
It arises from the reservation of the left “lane” for walkers.
(the same inefficiency argument could be made for HOV lanes and bike lanes on roads)
Solution: Encourage greater use of the reserved passing lane (or HOV lane or bike lane), as opposed to getting rid of it.
Out of left field … on the rare occasion that I take an escalator, going up, I stand on the balls of my feet with heels hanging down for an impromptu hamstring stretch. It’s a zen moment.
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Reblogged this on Sandy James Planner.