Don't Walk on Escalators. It's Faster if Everyone Stands.

Don't Walk on Escalators. It's Faster if Everyone Stands.

People who walk on escalators might say that they do it because they're "in a hurry," but we indolent standers know that they only do it to make us feel bad. In an unexpected-and counterintuitive-twist of fate, though, it turns out that the walkers are actually the true societal drain.

slate.com

Research from the University of Greenwich in 2011 indicated that on average about 75 percent of people will stand on escalators while the other 25 percent walk. Right away you can see how reserving half of an escalator's real estate for only one-quarter of the people who use it might not make sense. And people tend to create more following distance on the walking side of the escalator versus the standing side. Transport for London's simulations preliminarily showed that using a whole Holborn Station escalator for standing would allow 31.25 more people per minute to board the escalator (112.5 people on the escalator per minute versus 81.25 people per minute with a walking lane).

In fact the three-week experiment in 2015 had even better results than the Transport for London researchers predicted based on the Greenwich research. For example, one escalator that normally transported 12,745 people between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m. on a typical week was able to move 16,220 because of standing rules. But the Guardian reports that commuters pushed back, calling the trial “stupid” or yelling, “This isn’t Russia!”