Whenever an escalator isn’t moving, why does it feel as if all the fluids in your body are spilling over in front of you?
And why not when you’re climbing up the stairs?
I’m not sure I feel this, but my guess is you are expecting movement but not feeling it, and this disparity is causing a mild form of motion sickness.
Also escalator steps seem wider than usual steps.
We are so used to steps being a certain size that we feel uncomfortable walking up or down escalators. Just doesn’t feel right to our bodies.
I think I meant longer rather than wider.
I think this is the main issue. We are used to basically an 8" riser and Escalators are typically 12". This causes you to step down further than muscle memory is expecting and you might lurch forward a bit like you where tipsy.
Going up you just lift your foot higher and no balance is lost. It might feel different but no tipsy feeling.
Jim
I suspect there could also be a visual aspect to this - the parallel grooves on each step aren’t noticeable when you’re stood still, but when you’re walking down, they appear to move alongside one another in a disconcerting way.
If it’s about the size of the steps, why does it feel perfectly normal to walk up – or down – a moving escalator?
I have the symptom mentioned by GorillaMan. The steps seem to shimmer and vibrate. I will not walk down a stopped escalator unless there is no alternative, and then it is slowly, grasping the handrails and not looking down.
Same here. I mean, I’ll walk up and down the escalator, but there is a weird shimmery effect and an expectation of movement that doesn’t come. Doesn’t exactly make me dizzy, but it is slightly out-of-sync with reality somehow.
Many escalators have treads patterned with parallel black and silver stripes, which gives them an Op art appearance.
Your brain “measures” the first step. When, like a stopped escalator, the steps aren’t all the same height, the measurement is off. The brain adjusts, but still expects all the steps to be the same, so you feel off balance. Do you notice the the middle steps don’t have that off balance feel? That’s because they are, for a while, even.
It’s easy to get hurt on steps like that.
No - and I’ve walked down some bloody long stationary escalators!
I get the same shimmery effect–I don’t feel so much tipsy as unbalanced and liable to fall (this is down, not up).
I thought I was the only one who got this–I once got a shoelace toggle end stuck in an escalator as a child (very scarey, I was 5 and almost lost my shoe, never mind my foot)) and thought this was some residual phobic type thing.
I understand that you have trouble focusing both eyes on the same spot of the step, since these lines all look the same. So your right eye looks at 20th silver bar from the left, while your left eye looks at the 23rd, but you think you are looking at the same bar. You eyes try to focus on this object, which it really can’t do. You get a differing perception of depth.
That’s a very good point. I suspect it’s purely psychological - we associate the characteristic appearance of escalators with a certain movement.
Oh, forgot to say - I get the same feeling when walking down a moving escalator. However, it needs to be a long one - if it’s only from one storey to the next, there isn’t time for the visual sensation to appear. If it’s a hundred feet long, there certainly is.
Hmmm…now that you mention it, I also get it when in the Tube, whether the thing is working or not. (I don’t know of anywhere else that has that long of escalators–they’re like escalators on steroids).
Perhaps the depth perception has something to do with it.
We need a grant to study this in detail. 
Maybe it is more psychological than anything else. We like what we are used to. We tend to get uncomfortable with change.
I, like many others, have noticed this same phenomenom. --------a stopped escalator flat out does not feel “right” walking.
I find it to be very similar to the scenario, when after maybe a week or two on an ocean liner you get off the ship and----------
—Something seriously wrong with the ground. Seems vaguely harder than normal--------and just plain doesn’t act right. Seems like things should be moving around, when they are perfectly and very strangely stationary.
(of course it doesn’t take very long to get over that feeling. And “ground” seems perfectly normal again)
I only get this temporary out-of-balance feeling on my first few steps on an out-of-service escalator going down. I never get it when walking on a moving escalator, going up or down, nor when I first encounter a non-working up escalator. For this reason, I’ve always attributed the out-of-balance feeling to the unexpectedness of an escalator not moving down on my first step which forces me to take a different stride than I had originally planned. In other words, I’m temporarily out of step with the tempo of the escalator steps. Once that first stride or two is out of the way, I’m fine.
Yet another thought…the steps on a stopped escalator are not completely rigidly-positioned, but rock very slightly.