The tube at a standstill: why TfL stopped people walking up the escalators

[miami]

Were said people also carrying some small children and a couple of dogs?

 

[adrock1976]

Article in yesterday's Guardian

It’s British lore: on escalators, you stand on the right and walk on the left. So why did the London Underground ask grumpy commuters to stand on both sides? And could it help avert a looming congestion crisis?


On 4 December last year, the London Underground ingested 4,821,000 passengers and spat them out at their destinations, and in doing so set a new record for a single day. If you paused to contemplate this for a moment, you might think of all those Oyster cards tapping, all those doors sliding, all those people moving, consider whatever mad visionary first thought of demolishing houses to dig holes in the ground to put trains in, and conclude that a subterranean public transport network is a small miracle. Most of the time, though, commuters don’t pause, and don’t conclude anything of the sort. They have other things on their mind. To many of them, “a small miracle” might seem more like a description of their journey to work than of the system that facilitates it.

In the execution of their own daily miracles, London’s commuters have learned to withstand vast and unpredictable challenges: track closures; signal failures; engineering works. And they have developed a thick skin. But on that particular Friday, the 11,000 of them who got off at Holborn station between 8.30 and 9.30am faced an unusually severe provocation. As they turned into the concourse at the bottom of the station’s main route out and looked up, they saw something frankly outrageous: on the escalators just ahead of them, dozens of people were standing on the left.

We might be bad at dancing and expressing our feelings, but say this for the British: when we settle on a convention of public order, we bloody well stick to it. We wait in line. We leave the last biscuit. And when we take the escalator, we stand on the right. The left is reserved for people in a hurry. In Washington DC, those who block the way are known as “escalumps”; here, they can expect the public humiliation of a tutting sound just over their shoulder. “Passengers just don’t like having these things changed,” says Celia Harrison, a Transport for London (TfL) customer strategy analyst, and one of the key people responsible for this heretical deviation from the norm. “I’ve worked on stations for many years. So I was aware that whatever we did people weren’t going to be comfortable about having their routine disturbed.”

The idea had come about after Len Lau, Vauxhall area manager, had gone to Hong Kong on holiday. Lau noticed that passengers on that city’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR) were standing calmly on both sides of the escalator and, it seemed, travelling more efficiently and safely as a result. His report prompted Harrison and her colleagues to wonder whether the same effect would apply at a station such as Holborn, and so they set about arranging a three-week trial.

The theory, if counterintuitive, is also pretty compelling. Think about it. It’s all very well keeping one side of the escalator clear for people in a rush, but in stations with long, steep walkways, only a small proportion are likely to be willing to climb. In lots of places, with short escalators or minimal congestion, this doesn’t much matter. But a 2002 study of escalator capacity on the Underground found that on machines such as those at Holborn, with a vertical height of 24 metres, only 40% would even contemplate it. By encouraging their preference, TfL effectively halves the capacity of the escalator in question, and creates significantly more crowding below, slowing everyone down. When you allow for the typical demands for a halo of personal space that persist in even the most disinhibited of commuters – a phenomenon described by crowd control guru Dr John J Fruin as “the human ellipse”, which means that they are largely unwilling to stand with someone directly adjacent to them or on the first step in front or behind - the theoretical capacity of the escalator halves again. Surely it was worth trying to haul back a bit of that wasted space.

Paul Stoneman, one of Harrison’s colleagues, did some preliminary calculations. In theory, he found, getting people to stand on both sides would mean that 31 more passengers would get on to the escalator each minute – an increase of 28%. Holborn seemed like the perfect test case, not only for the rake of its escalators, but also for its rush-hour stampede: “When you come round the corner and see this throng,” says Stoneman, “you just go, blinking flip, I don’t want to use this station, it’s a nightmare. It’s like Bank.” But success was by no means a given: as Lau also noted, commuters in Hong Kong are vastly different to British ones. In a wash-up meeting to analyse the results of the trial a few weeks after it was completed, Stoneman asked the dozen people in the room: “How many years have we been saying, ‘stand on the right’? It’s quite a significant behaviour to change.”

Hard though it might be, changing how commuters behave is an ever more important part of a barrage of efforts to increase the capacity of the Tube, efforts that draw in equal parts on social psychology and fluid dynamics: the best model for the movement of a crowd through a warren of tunnels is the movement of a torrent of water through pipes. London is growing faster than any other European city; its population of 8.6 million is expected to hit 10 million by 2030. The London Infrastructure Plan 2050 predicts demand on the system to rise by 60%. And so TfL has to extract every last ounce of capacity from its underground network, the oldest in the world. A 1928 poster on display at the London Transport Museum and TfL headquarters charts the flux in passengers through the day - “The Workers”, “The Businessman”, “The Shoppers and Pleasure-Seekers” – and adds them up to a hefty 1.1 million, a total so large that the copywriter boasts: “WALK IN AND SEE THE SHOW/ NEVER A DULL MOMENT IF YOU TRAVEL UNDERGROUND.” That mass of people was still less than a quarter the size of last year’s average load.

To keep up with that growth, huge investment is needed, and major works are nearly always being carried out: as the Holborn trial went on, the £500m upgrade of Tottenham Court Road was being completed one stop away. In a system operating so close to capacity, the obedience of its users is also vital. “If everybody wasn’t so compliant in their journey,” says Stoneman, “it would be a fistfight down there.” And so, with so much at stake, decisions to wind up commuters are not taken lightly: there is serious analysis behind them.

The stand-on-the-left controversy is no exception. Harrison, Stoneman and their colleagues believe it could make a noticeable impact on congestion at some of London’s busiest stations, congestion that will only get worse as train design, frequency and reliability improve, as the trains get faster and the doors get bigger, and ever more passengers are dumped on the platform at a time. “From my point of view,” says TfL’s head of transport planning Geoff Hobbs, “the ideal train would look like a bread bin”.

In order to make their plan work, they had to be ingenious – and persuasive. “Originally, we thought enforcement might be a good idea,” Harrison told colleagues at the wash-up, “as in people standing on the left in uniform, so that people couldn’t walk past them. But after concerns about possible assaults were raised, we decided it wasn’t that good of an idea. So we went for encouragement.” That meant teams of staff standing at the bottom of the escalators with loudhailers, asking commuters, as cheerfully as possible, if they would mind standing on both sides. It mean plain-clothes “plants” – “great, big lift engineers,” according to Stoneman – being sent up the escalators to block the way for others and create a new sort of social pressure. It even meant asking amenable couples to hold hands across the escalator, the better to thwart those who wished to slalom through the line.

Harrison is a 16-year veteran of the Underground, and even if she mostly cycles herself, she loves it, above all for the people. For the best part of two decades, she has absorbed everything a global city can throw at her – from the mundane intensity of rush hour to the seismic shock of the 7/7 attacks, when, as station supervisor at Aldgate, it fell to her to call for ambulances after the bomb went off. Through it all, she says, she has remained an optimist, and perhaps she has a better sense of perspective than most. Last month, as she stood on the concourse with all those good ideas up her sleeve and watched the trial unfold, she was a little unprepared for the intensity of the reaction, let alone for the interest of newspapers such as Denmark’s Politiken or the Washington Post. During the three weeks of the Holborn project, those who disapproved of the idea voiced their opinions with alacrity, as a preliminary internal report diligently records. There were plenty who didn’t seem to hate it, too – but they were rather quieter.
‘It’s quite a significant behaviour to change’ … says Paul Stoneman, pictured with fellow TfL strategic planner Celia Harrison at Holborn station in London.

“This is a charter for the lame and lazy!” said one. “I know how to use a bloody escalator!” said another. The pilot was “terrible”, “loopy,” “crap”, “ridiculous”, and a “very bad idea”; in a one-hour session, 18 people called it “stupid”. A customer who was asked to stand still replied by giving the member of staff in question the finger. One man, determined to stride to the top come what may, pushed a child to one side. “Can’t you let us walk if we want to?” asked another. “This isn’t Russia!”

It is not yet clear whether a Putinesque future awaits us. If the stand-on-the-left experiment is to be adopted permanently at Holborn, and potentially be extended to other comparable stations, it will have to get through more testing and analysis. What could politely be termed “customer feedback” has already led the team to conclude that it would be wise to keep at least one escalator running conventionally. But the preliminary evidence is clear: however much some people were annoyed, Lau’s hunch was right. It worked. Through their own observations and the data they gathered, Harrison and her team found strong evidence to back their case. An escalator that carried 12,745 customers between 8.30 and 9.30am in a normal week, for example, carried 16,220 when it was designated standing only. That didn’t match Stoneman’s theoretical numbers: it exceeded them.


These results, you might imagine, would be enough to see the model introduced instantly at any station where the escalator was sufficiently steep to discourage people from walking up. But there’s a problem: those damn commuters. With the constant (and unsustainable) attention of staff, and three weeks of practice, they eventually became a little more docile, and followed the new regime, satisfying themselves, as the report puts it, with a “great deal of non-verbal communication in the form of head-shaking”. The following week, they immediately went back to normal. And so another trial is under discussion. “It’s like child psychology,” says Stoneman, a father. “It takes four days to get your kid to go to bed and do what it’s supposed to do, and it takes one day for them to stay up, and you’re sitting there banging your head against the wall again.” So if you can’t tell them what to do every two minutes, how on earth do you get them to comply?

At the wash-up meeting in the faded grandeur of TfL’s office at St James’ Park station, this question was the subject of careful scrutiny. The next trial, if it happens, will focus on one escalator alone; it will investigate whether customers can be persuaded to stand without loudhailer-brandishing staff to monitor them. The handrail and tread of the escalator will be a different colour, and firmly planted pairs of feet will decorate the left of the steps. In lieu of actual people, a hologram customer service operative will remind people to stand on both sides.

Then there’s the question of exactly what the hologram should say. Some argued for an appeal to altruism. Said Stoneman: “If the understanding is, we’re doing this for the greater good, people will comply.” Then it was pointed out that in the run-up to the Olympics, when everyone was panicking that the Tube would be hopelessly oversubscribed, the team tasked with encouraging people to take alternate routes had hit on the opposite insight: “It wasn’t about saying you’re taking one for team London,” said communications manager James Grant. “It was about saying, you’re benefiting from the journey yourself.” So what’s the slogan? Stoneman cast around for a moment. “It’s a perception of being held back, but you’re not really,” he said. “So … this is benefiting you, your individual time is reduced, but you are relinquishing the right, if you wish to, of walking on this escalator.” There was a pause. “Right,” said Grant Dyer, another of the report’s co-authors. “We’ll try to make that snappier.”
The London Infrastructure Plan 2050 predicts demand on the system will rise by 60% so TfL needs to extract every last ounce of capacity from the network.


Perhaps it’s a shame that the appeal to altruism tends to prove less effective, but Harrison doesn’t find it terribly surprising. “People would be shocked if they knew how complicated the whole system is,” she says, a week or so after the meeting. “How difficult it is to run a service every two minutes, and control crowding, and work around equipment failures.” Since she started on the tube herself, she has amended one important bit of her commuting etiquette: she doesn’t run for trains as the doors close any more. “On the Jubilee line, if they have to reopen the door because you’re caught, that’s a 30-second delay. And then you have a gap in front, and a knock-on effect, and it gets bigger and bigger, and before you know it, there’s a five-minute delay going through central London. But I was in the habit, and it took me a good month or so to stop myself doing it. How are you going to stop the customers who don’t even understand?”

And yet, recalcitrant though commuters can be, Harrison retains a faith in their reason when it really counts. She remembers how they left the station after the bomb went off at Aldgate: “It was one of the most striking aspects of the day. People doing exactly what we asked them to do, which was leave – really calmly, completely unselfishly, helping each other. And this quality of silence.”

On any given morning at Holborn, the atmosphere is, happily, almost the exact opposite. And perhaps that tumult is the price and the pleasure of living in a great city. Do Londoners have it in their nature to stand on the left? It’s too early to say. Change is hard. Still, as I arrived on a Victoria line platform shortly after speaking with Harrison, and I heard the tell-tale beep of a train getting ready to depart, I surprised myself. I didn’t try to squeeze aboard. Another one, after all, will be along in a minute.

The standing to the right rule, first promoted in Britain, is not mirrored all over the world: Shanghai residents take a strictly optional approach; Australia is a notable rogue, preferring escalator users to stand to the left; and the rules are different in different Japanese cities (left in Tokyo; right in Osaka).

Escalator users in Hong Kong and Japan have seen campaigns encouraging them to stand on both sides of the escalator: “Let’s All Grab a Handrail,” and “Don’t walk. Stand where you like.” But results have been mixed – etiquette seems still to be trumping rules.

Leaving your paper behind on the train in London might be seen as a courtesy, but in Vienna it’s not the done thing – authorities are actively encouraging people to adhere to this piece of etiquette with signs and announcements.

In Japan it’s considered polite to switch your phone to “Manner Mode” (an excellent way of describing what we might think of as “silent”) when using the metro, so that other passengers aren’t subjected to ringtones galore as they travel.

Eating durian fruit, considered the world’s smelliest, is a terrible faux pas on Singapore’s MRT, and has been banned by authorities – “no durian” signs have been posted around the network.

It’s considered bad manners to sit in priority seats in Seoul subway carriages at any time, regardless of whether there’s anyone around who needs them – you can expect multiple chiding looks.

Ellie Violet Bramley

Original article can be found using this URL:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/16/the-tube-at-a-standstill-why-tfl-stopped-people-walking-up-the-escalators?CMP=fb_gu

Seems interesting, but would it work in practice at the other Underground stations?

Would "stand on the right" work in department stores and large shopping centres?

 

[deltic]

At last a good and detailed account of the reasoning and impact of the TfL's trial at Holborn. It is clear that standing on both sides of the escalator works on long escalators where few people will walk and in cases where you have large volumes of passengers that lead to queuing at the bottom of the escalator. Canary Wharf is in someways similar and sheer volume of passengers often leads to standing on both sides.

My observation is that walking on the right is most common in the morning peak where most passengers are regulars and know the system. It tends to break down in central London outside this time and especially at mainline rail stations, Euston and Kings Cross/St Pancras are good examples where suitcases and lack of knowledge means that people stand on both sides of the escalator. It would seem difficult to have different systems at different stations and at different times of the day but for larger busy stations I can see standing on both sides being encouraged.

 

[yorkie]

There is a lot of waffle on there, but I am strongly opposed to this "trial". It can take so much longer to interchange at stations such as Leeds, where most people ignore the "stand on the right" signs, than in London.

Where escalators are very long I can sort of understand it, but I worry it will cause confusion and cause people to ignore common sense and stand at all escalators.

It's also encouraging people to be more lazy. I usually walk, even if I'm not in a rush, because it's healthier. If you can't do a bit of walking then you really need to consider your lifestyle choices in my opinion!

 

[island]

I can say as someone who works nearby that this is a good idea.

There are normally three up escalators in Holborn in the morning peak, and they are particularly long. The old status quo had passengers standing in the right-hand side of all three all the way up, and a mere dozen or so passengers at a time braving the long climb on the left. The impact of this is that the small square hall at the bottom of the escalators became crowded and backed up, particularly along the narrow tunnel to the Central line platforms. Passengers trying to get down to join trains faced a lot of difficulty.

By facilitating the use of both sides of the escalators, the crowding was reduced and people got on their way faster.

In practice I think a concession to the very fit would be appropriate by offering one walking "lane" on the leftmost escalator, though I grant that this is liable to cause passenger confusion in the short term.

 

[edwin_m]

It ought to be possible to install signage telling people when specific escalators are designated for standing on both sides, and even have them variable by times of day. A big sign above the foot of the escalator would be best. But not a "hologram" please!

I noticed recently on one LU station (not Holborn) that the little blue "stand on the right" reminder signs between the escalators had been replaced by similar-sized LCD displays that were also showing various other safety messages and could just as well be programmed to display "stand both sides". As the article says, normally it would be possible to retain a "walking lane" on at least one up escalator.

 

[Bletchleyite]

In practice I think a concession to the very fit would be appropriate by offering one walking "lane" on the leftmost escalator, though I grant that this is liable to cause passenger confusion in the short term.

Would a less confusing way be to have a walking *escalator*? That would still mean 2/3 of the capacity is standing rather than 1/2 as at present.

Personally I dislike this as I almost always walk; I prefer to be able to move more quickly through the network.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

I tend to use escalators to save time rather than effort.

So if I'm faced with one of these stand on both sides things anywhere, will it actually be quicker to use the fixed staircase in the middle?

 

[Bletchleyite]

So if I'm faced with one of these stand on both sides things anywhere, will it actually be quicker to use the fixed staircase in the middle?

Yes, where provided, and I already do where one is provided. But they are comparatively rare.

 

[talltim]

How much throughput could you get if you made everyone walk?

 

[Starmill]

I'm not that regular an Underground user, but I do find it exceptionally annoying when there is a massive crowd at the bottom of the escalator because too few people want to walk up. I often don't want to walk myself if it's the end of a long day, or if its too hot, particularly because you feel pressured to walk quickly if someone appears behind you, and you know there isn't going to be a space for you to fit into the other 'lane'.

I'm surprised it has taken this long for this to be tried. In Manchester you do not have this 'rule' and it shows in more sedate environments like shopping centres - everyone gets to the top more quickly.

Despite this, it is uncommon for me to stand on an escalator unless I want to admire the sights. But then I never travel on LU at peak times!

It can take so much longer to interchange at stations such as Leeds, where most people ignore the "stand on the right" signs, than in London.

It is very difficult to interchange at Leeds full stop - and it's because the station has been badly designed. That's what needs to change!

 

[SunSeeker]

A month ago when I was working at Hyde Park Corner during Winter Wonderland I was at the bottom of the escalators instructing people to go up both sides, standing if they need to, as it gets so busy.

I was surprised that actually quite a few people followed my instruction.

 

[NY Yankee]

The problem with this approach is that some people are faster than others. For example, a younger, healthier person will likely be faster than an elderly or overweight person. It is unfair for the younger, healthier person to be delayed and possibly miss a connecting train. In addition, a station should not be so crowded that it's at full capacity.

A better solution would be to have both sets of escalators go up and for trains in a certain direction to bypass the station if there's a dangerous crowding situation. For example, if a Bakerloo line train was heading from Elephant and Castle to Harrow and Wealdstone and there was a dangerous crowding condition at Piccadilly Circus then the northbound trains would bypass the station and southbound trains would stop at the station. Northbound customers who want to get to Piccadilly Circus could use the Northern line and the Piccadilly line to get to Piccadilly Circus.

 

[AM9]

A better solution would be to have both sets of escalators go up and for trains in a certain direction to bypass the station if there's a dangerous crowding situation. For example, if a Bakerloo line train was heading from Elephant and Castle to Harrow and Wealdstone and there was a dangerous crowding condition at Piccadilly Circus then the northbound trains would bypass the station and southbound trains would stop at the station. Northbound customers who want to get to Piccadilly Circus could use the Northern line and the Piccadilly line to get to Piccadilly Circus.

That's a bit tough on a passenger who is on a Bakerloo train and suddenly finds themself at Oxford Circus rather than Piccadilly circuse. They then have to walk up a flight of stairs and down another to catch a southbound Bakerloo train back to Piccadilly, by which time Oxford Circus could become more congested.
Far better to temporarily close that part of the station to enable the excess of passengers to dissipate. That happens all the time. An inconsistent tube stopping pattern just creates more foot passenger movement at stations. Passengers expect all trains to stop at all stations except in real emegencies.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

How much throughput could you get if you made everyone walk?

That would cause problems for the elderly and disabled wouldn't it?

 

[cuccir]

As soon as you think about it, it's obvious that this would increase capacity in the peak, even if it slows faster people down - it's akin to setting low speed limits on smart motorways to stop congestion.

Whether people can cope with variable regulations or a change in practice is a different matter. However, perhaps it will become easier as people become familiar with 'smart' cities!

 

[Bletchleyite]

It might also cause people to stop using the Tube, further reducing congestion. I always walk on escalators, sometimes very quickly. If I were to be prevented from doing so, my Tube journeys, particularly those in busy stations with a lot of escalator travel like Bank and those involving a change, would slow by potentially up to 5 minutes - possibly making a brisk walk or Boris bike win on time. And when commuting, time is very often king.

FWIW, though, I would be more respectful of a dynamic system like Smart Motorways (a system I really do like as it demonstrably works, primarily by removing the brake-light cascade) than of a situation where at a quiet time my journeys were to be unnecessarily lengthened by people standing deliberately in the way - something that does irritate me in shopping centres, quoted upthread as more relaxed places, but to me places to be avoided as far as possible (I love Amazon) and when not avoidable to be entered, the shopping completed and exited in as quick a time as humanly possible such that I can go and do something that is actually enjoyable.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
FWIW on escalators there are other things that could be considered to speed things up - Paddington Bakerloo has a lot of conflicting movements of passengers at the top of the escalator which appears it could be sorted out by swapping the direction of the escalators in each peak. It's unlikely to be the only such station.

 

[AM9]

Now don't get me started about Travelators!

 

[urbophile]

Having lived in London for ten years, it was amusing to return to Liverpool and find Merseyrail passengers observing two different codes according to which station they were at. At Central, the Northern line escalator is fairly short but rarely does anybody observe lane discipline, which is infuriating if you are rushing for a train and someone is happily obstructing both sides. At Moorfields, which serves the business district and is fairly lightly used outside the peaks, people are much more used to letting the keenies walk, or run, up and down the left hand sides. At first I thought the former was just scouse cussedness, but when you see the crowds that station has to cope with, it would be ridiculous to keep one lane clear just for the small minority who wanted to save two seconds.

 

[Oswyntail]

... If you can't do a bit of walking then you really need to consider your lifestyle choices in my opinion!

And there we have the relatively young and fit view. I am 62, overweight yes, but was an active sportsman until I developed heart trouble and high blood pressure. There are no times when I can barely walk up a couple of stairs before almost collapsing. Are you suggesting that, on a rare visit to London, I pitch up at the bottom of the Holborn stack and pause to consider my lifestyle choices (no fags and little booze to give up)? If I started to walk up without stopping, even when the stairs are moving, I could kill myself and seriously inconvenience many others. And, of course, we are dealing with Londoners, who never give way to let slower people onto their step, at the bottom or half way up. No, the only answer is for me to wait at the bottom of the stairs, "considering my lifestyle", until I have lost enough weight and improved my fitness level so as to be able to leap upwards like a young gazelle from York.
But then I would get busted for having an out-of-date ticket. Us oldsters can't win

 

[Bletchleyite]

Having lived in London for ten years, it was amusing to return to Liverpool and find Merseyrail passengers observing two different codes according to which station they were at. At Central, the Northern line escalator is fairly short but rarely does anybody observe lane discipline, which is infuriating if you are rushing for a train and someone is happily obstructing both sides. At Moorfields, which serves the business district and is fairly lightly used outside the peaks, people are much more used to letting the keenies walk, or run, up and down the left hand sides. At first I thought the former was just scouse cussedness, but when you see the crowds that station has to cope with, it would be ridiculous to keep one lane clear just for the small minority who wanted to save two seconds.

To be fair on the Northern Line you have the option of running down the fixed staircase on the other side.

 

[swt_passenger]

How much throughput could you get if you made everyone walk?

Well logically, without doing the maths, you'd get a significantly reduced throughput.

If making everyone stand on the left (as well as the right) is proven to increase capacity overall, surely the opposite must also be true?

 

[me123]

Well logically, without doing the maths, you'd get a significantly reduced throughput.

You would. When you are walking up an escalator, you need more space around you than you would just standing there. You could easily have people standing on every single step of an escalator, but when you're walking you need a few empty steps ahead of you.

It's similar to road traffic - if there's more traffic on the road, cars have to be closer together and as such will have to go slower.

 

[yorkie]

And there we have the relatively young and fit view...

OK I should have said with obvious exceptions, blind people, disabled, elderly, those with injuries/illness etc... But, as a society, we do have a big problem.

If making everyone stand on the left (as well as the right) is proven to increase capacity overall, surely the opposite must also be true?

The optimum throughput would probably be to have everyone* walking, with a fast and slow lane, as there are two factors that increase throughout: one is bandwidth (you really want 2 sets of people, rather than 1) and the other is speed (the time taken to get from bottom to top). Of course that would be impracticable.

Making everyone stand is likely to increase throughput only at stations where a significant number of people opt to queue to stand rather than walk, such as at stations with very long escalators. Although some people will get there slower, the throughput is greater if there are more people actually using the escalator at any one time.

* And lifts provided for those who can't.

 

[edwin_m]

Changing from RER B to C at Notre Dame this evening, I found they'd closed both escalators in the shaft leaving just a flight of 100 or so steps! When I got to the top I discovered the head of the other escalator shaft that lands further south on the line B platforms, but there was no sign pointing this out at platform level.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I very often walk up the spiral staircase at Euston, avoids the crowds. It is a public area because it is signposted for public use going down, so not going to get into trouble, though it does half feel like you shouldn't be there! Not a good idea to do this if the down escalators are closed, but in normal use it is very quiet.

I'd use more of these little back ways round if I knew of them...

 

[edwin_m]

OK I should have said with obvious exceptions, blind people, disabled, elderly, those with injuries/illness etc... But, as a society, we do have a big problem.

Also to consider those with luggage. LU is rather more relaxed about luggage on escalators than NR seem to be (with so few lifts they could hardly be otherwise). When carrying or dragging a suitcase someone who would normally be able to walk up an escalator is unable to do so, unless they take up both sides and probably go more slowly than those not so encumbered. Which rather defeats the point of expecting everyone to walk! The risk of falling with a case is also probably much more if you are trying to walk with it than just parking it on the step above and going with the flow.

 

[Daz28]

Why don't they just make the escalators go faster? Simple.

 

[IanD]

FWIW, though, I would be more respectful of a dynamic system like Smart Motorways (a system I really do like as it demonstrably works, primarily by removing the brake-light cascade)

Yes, they're demonstrably fine when the traffic is flowing (as you'd expect with an extra lane) but if there's an accident then my experience is that the effect is much worse than on a traditional "Stupid Motorway".

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes, they're demonstrably fine when the traffic is flowing (as you'd expect with an extra lane) but if there's an accident then my experience is that the effect is much worse than on a traditional "Stupid Motorway".

In what way, out of interest? In the event of an accident they are much better at dropping the speed limit for passing traffic etc. Yes, a traditional "dumb motorway" with matrixes can do that as well, but most drivers treat a speed shown on a traditional matrix as just a bit of a warning of a problem ahead rather than actually slowing down.