
A London Subway Experiment: Please Don’t Walk Up the Escalator - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/world/europe/a-london-subway-experiment-please-dont-walk-up-the-escalator.html
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fredley
I commute to this station every day, at rush hour. There is an 'avatar' (a
projection of a person) repeatedly asking people to stand on both sides.
Recently she has started becoming more sarcastic, I think they are A/B testing
her instructions as there are quite often people counting at the top of the
flight.

It is very, very difficult standing on the left, it goes against every fibre
of my being to do so, but I've managed it at least once now.

~~~
chippy
It's easier to stand on the left if there's someone in front of you blocking
your path.

In other words I will will stand on the left if there is other people there
too. I will walk up the left until I'm blocked though.

(Usually, to tell the truth I am travelling in non peak times with a wheely
bag so have to stand anyhow)

~~~
shuheng
Same here. I'll walk on the left whenever I can. And I'll stand on the left
whenever I need to.

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cm2187
As the article points out, letting people walk up should probably be faster.
What causes the block is people misbehaving. Blocking the left line because
they want to go on the right line. Stopping for directions at the end of the
escalator. Blocking the left line with bags or packages. But the solution
should be better education, not slowing everyone down.

It's like letting people out of a car before getting in. In most tube
stations, londoners are very courteous and the process is very fluid, even at
peak hour. In touristic hot spots in the summer, you pretty much always have a
crowd pushing in like a scared cattle. Some poster to remind passengers how
things work in the UK would probably do the trick.

~~~
usrusr
This has been discussed here before: standing people pack tighter than walking
people, therefore all standing ends up with more throughput, at the expense of
lower individual latency (for the would-be walkers).

But you only need that optimization when escalators are at full utilization.
In many cities, escalator discipline is low enough that the walk/stand lane
pattern deteriorates when the escalator approaches maximum capacity. The
minority who don't get it and rudely block the walkers accidentally apply the
throughput optimization. London seems to lack a reliable distribution of rude
blockers who would accidentally optimize for throughput when necessary, so
they need to search for an explicit solution.

~~~
gmluke
> standing people pack tighter than walking people, therefore all standing
> ends up with more throughput, at the expense of lower individual latency
> (for the would-be walkers)

If the would-be walkers derive much greater than average utility from a quick
journey, isn't it likely that the all-standing regimen achieves higher average
throughput at the expense of lower average utility?

~~~
usrusr
When there are enough passengers to saturate full all-standing throughout,
reducing throughput to allow individual latency improvement will soon cause
waiting times before the bottleneck. Once a sufficiently long queue has
formed, newly arriving walkers will not have a quicker total journey than they
would have had under throughput optimization with shorter (or no) queues.

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djsumdog
I really feel like more effort should be put into tube automation. In
Singapore, all the lines are automated. Each platform has those safety double-
elevator type doors the trains line up with (The Jubilee line is automated in
London and has this same setup at most platforms).

This allows Singapore to run a lot more trains. I don't think I ever waited
for more than five minutes. Automation is possible in London. The DLR and
Jubilee lines are automated. There's push back from unions; jobs lost and such
-- but overall a fully automated tube system would reduce congestion by quite
a bit simply due to increasing the volume and frequency in trains safely.

~~~
thrownaway1984
There are two problems with this.

(1) Unions. (The tube driver's union is able to stop London and they are not
afraid to do so.)

(2) It's not actually very easy to do for several of London's tube stations.
Several of the tube stations have curved platforms making it rather harder to
install the safety double elevator doors.

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lisivka
(1) Blame union for every next suicide.

(2) Skip automation on these stations.

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zubspace
In Switzerland they were and are trying hard to educate people:

[http://www.tageswoche.ch/images/cache/3264x2448/fit/images%7...](http://www.tageswoche.ch/images/cache/3264x2448/fit/images%7Ccms-
image-000334098.jpg)

[http://files.newsnetz.ch/story/1/7/5/17591954/35/topelement....](http://files.newsnetz.ch/story/1/7/5/17591954/35/topelement.jpg)

[http://www.dicconbewes.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/10/img_05...](http://www.dicconbewes.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/10/img_0527.jpg)

[http://www.dicconbewes.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/10/Links-...](http://www.dicconbewes.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/10/Links-gehen-rechts-stehen-1024x729.jpg)

Officially, the results were mixed. It often happens that someone is just
unaware of the situation and blocks the whole escalator. But personally I
think that it works really well, moreso during rush hour. I only have a couple
of minutes to switch trains and always ask people in a friendly manner to let
me pass and they always respond well. I think it's good to raise awareness.

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Ended
>Walking anywhere in London or navigating the subway during rush hour means
having to make a mad, dodging, aggressive dance against an oncoming tide of
people, many of whom seem oblivious to Britain’s long tradition of walking on
the left.

I feel obliged to point out that this 'long tradition' only exists on
escalators in the London Underground. Anywhere else in the country (or London
for that matter) we walk on whichever side we feel like.

~~~
13of40
It took a while for me to figure this out, but there's actually an unmentioned
rule in the US that you walk to the right when you're passing people, at least
when it's congested enough that you have to choose. I see a lot of people from
overseas struggling with this where I work, at least early on.

~~~
Sacho
Isn't that just a parallel of driving rules?

~~~
13of40
Yeah, I was responding to the "we walk on whichever side we feel like" part,
which is not the case in the US.

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CarolineW
Extensive discussion of this question from around 5 months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10916704](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10916704)

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kristianc
At least part of the problem with Holborn is the station's horrific design.
Each platform has only one entrance, and if you want to change from the
Central to the Picadilly line (which many do) you have to walk directly
through a flow of people who queuing for the escalator to exit the station.

This is compounded by the high number of tourists using the station (usually
on their way to Covent Garden, or doing the aforementioned change.) For such
an important station in London's infrastructure, the actual station design is
terrible.

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grabcocque
You know, I've lived in London all my life and I've never encountered this
"London Subway".

~~~
albinoloverats
You occasionally see signs around for them (though not so much in town, more
often a little further out); where the path takes pedestrians under the road
;-)

~~~
grabcocque
Interesting though, because it subtly demonstrates that some NYP sub-ed is
strongly convinced of the provincial nature of New Yorkers.

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13of40
I wonder if it would make more sense to tell people "please consider walking
up the left side of the escalator instead of standing". It would probably
improve congestion, but even if it didn't, people might get a little bit more
exercise out of their commute.

~~~
timclark
That is the normal recommendation on the London Underground and that is what
they are specifically not doing in this case as an experiment.

[http://citytransport.info/Digi/P1240646a.jpg](http://citytransport.info/Digi/P1240646a.jpg)

~~~
13of40
No, that means "if you choose to walk, walk on the left". I mean "Walk, and do
it on the left."

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luckystarr
Another idea to reduce congestion even further: "Please ALL walk up the
escalator."

~~~
grabcocque
No. The point of this experiment is to show that this would make things worse.
Much worse.

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kingosticks
Maybe I'm just hypersensitive to this right now, but I really didn't get the
point of the Brussels snipe in the last paragraph. Can't we just enjoy
exercises in optimising escalator throughput without mentioning Brexit?

~~~
kingosticks
And more on topic: I would be interested to see how this system, and the
normal system, compares to somewhere like covent garden which only has lifts
and gets seriously backed up. So much so that the official recommendations are
to avoid the station at peak times and walk from other nearby stations.
They'll have to do something about this at some point but there's no easy fix
here.

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dazc
Maybe someone could explain why it is necessary to reach the top of an
escalator before everyone else. Is your work so crucial that 5 seconds is
going to make so much difference or is it that you just don't like standing
still?

~~~
13of40
Yeah, actually sometimes I'm in a hurry. Sometimes I'm trying to make it to a
plane or get to a meeting that starts at a particular time, and making it to
one train versus the next one fifteen minutes later can make or break an
opportunity. Does that make sense?

~~~
dazc
Yes, thanks

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guard-of-terra
They do that in Moscow as long as I remember.

During rush hours, it's "please take both sides of an escalator", during
calmer hours, it's "please stand to the right, walk to the left".

Mostly works.

