I do the same thing! My dad taught me and I’ve taught my kids.
I do/did the same thing with the stairless yet angled peoplemovers they have/had at Disney. If you just walk really quickly you can zoom out of the peoplemover and nearly hit the opposite wall if you hold back from the previous riders and accelerate at the right time. Unfortunately they removed it from Space Mountain, the ride you could do this the best on. They still have it for Haunted Mansion and Pirates but they’re too crowded to get a good runway.
This doesn’t make sense, we already have a system in place for those that can’t walk. I see no reason that those in the categories you listed plus the tired or don’t want to couldn’t use the existing system. Handicapped elevators are everywhere there is an escalator.
The problem with people using a packed escalator is that the line can only be as fast as the slowest person in that line. Now, when people are standing, the slowest person (and therefore the speed of the entire line) is zero (relative to the steps on the escalator).
In a walking line, the maximum speed of the line will still be that of the slowest person people walking - and some people walk particularly slowly. The other problem is entering and exiting the escalator. As a walker, I get frustrated by the people who walk briskly to the base of the escalator and then sloooow down to time their entrance step. It’s even worse when they physically stop walking a few seconds short of the top to manage the extremely complicated maneuver of jumping off.
So you can all see the obvious solution here. No oe is allowed to walk on the escalator until they have passed their proficiency training and received their certificate Naturally, I shall set the curriculum standards. UND ZEY VILL BE RIGIDLY ENFORCED!!.
(My bolding)
No they’re not. On the London underground there are frequently only escalators - occasionally at the above-ground stations (which are still part of the underground) there’s only a lift and stairs, but several of the busiest central London stations are escalator and stairs only. It takes a massive amount of money to upgrade the station and it often has to be shut down to do so. Then there are stations like King’s Cross where the elevator option means a lot of walking to get to the numerous different lifts you have to get from the lowest-level platforms to the surface, whereas the escalators are pretty direct.
Here’s a linkto an old picture of the elevator system at King’s Cross. Bear in mind it’s actually got more complicated since then. The distances between those elevators is tiring if you’re pushing a wheelchair, pushing yourself in a wheelchair or have difficult walking.
Besides, there are lots of people who need to stand, but don’t necessarily need an elevator, like those with young children, those carrying luggage, people with minor mobility issues, or people who are just really tired. If you added all those to the elevators, the queues there would become really long. At King’s Cross, with lots of travellers, it would cause big backlogs.
And having a different system for some stations as opposed to others would cause mass confusion.
The same goes for public transport systems in many other countries I’ve visited.
Why is everyone in these areas in such a big goddamn hurry? Just calculate your time that you leave your house and allow plenty of extra time to catch your train, plane, or subway car. If you get there early, then have a nice cup of coffee and fucking relax. It makes me nervous in these places watching everyone frantically rushing around. And like others have said, it maybe saves you seconds.
However, the person who gets off the escalator and stops, scanning the horizon for his latest adventure? I fully support making it legal to blast that person like an inside linebacker hitting a wide receiver.
Huh. I’ve never seen a line to get on an escalator.
Elevators are not the answer. In high-traffic times, there can be an extended wait for the first available elevator with room, not so good for those who are tired, have small children, or are weighed down with parcels and bags. Few people on airport escalators don’t have hand luggage. Are you going to make all of them wait for elevators?
I’m not in favor of banning walking on escalators, though. Are there places that have separate escalators for walking and for standees?
Right. There are a lot of situations where people use escalators, and THEY ARE VERY DIFFERENT.
If there’s no line to get on the escalator, which describes almost every escalator I have ever used, then the “stand on the right, walk on the left” rule works very well. Those people who prefer to walk can do so, and those who prefer to stand can also do so, and neither interferes (much) with the other. This is the best solution for the enormous majority of escalators in the world.
BUT there are also jam-packed escalators that always (or routinely) have a queue to get on them. And not coincidentally, those are in place where it would be very expensive to add thruput in the form of stairs, additional escalator lanes, or more elevators. Because that’s the obvious best solution, so if it isn’t done, it’s because it’s hard to do that.
And science has found that you can improve total thruput in those escalators by forbidding walking, and jamming people as close together as possible. That’s a non-intuitive finding, but one that was verified in London with actual real-world data.
So for JUST THOSE FEW, GROSSLY OVERCROWDED escalators, it makes sense to forbid walking. This could be done with signs, fines, and dedicated employees to remind people and enforce the rules. Yes, that costs something, but it costs less than building another lane of escalator. And those employees are necessarily helping an enormous number of people exit faster.
“How to use escalators” is not a question that has a single always-true answer. It ought to depend on the circumstances.
So the resolution at the start of this thread is false
You make a good argument, but having one rule for some stations - especially a rule that can lead to fines - and a different rule for other stations would lead to chaos. A significant number of the people using the busiest stations in major cities are visitors, and it would be unreasonable to expect them to learn different rules for different stations. The staff needed would also take up space in what is often, in the older stations, a pretty confined area.
London Underground decided not to go with changing the rules, and they would have put a lot of thought and research into it.
And of course with the escalators that aren’t in heavy traffic areas there’s no need to try changing the rules to speed up throughput anyway.
Have you ever been on an escalator not at a dying mall?
Yes. I live in Los Angeles and regularly used the escalators on the subway pre-pandemic. Before that I lived in Boston for eight years (without a car) and regularly visited family in New York and rode those subway escalators regularly. I’ve also visited DC several times, and guess what I did there? Oh and I’ve ridden the subway escalators in London, Paris, and Munich too; I guess I just managed to avoid rush hour.
Avoiding rush hour must certainly been key. I’ve stood in line to get on escalators in NYC, Washington D.C., Paris, Barcelona, Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, Suzhou, Harbin, hell, every place in China because there are so many users. Never in Toronto or D.F., though.
I’m not denying it ever happens. I’m just questioning whether a universal rule based on a tiny percentage of escalators that get crowded maybe twice a day makes sense.