{"id":3471,"date":"2016-01-17T22:30:47","date_gmt":"2016-01-17T22:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/?p=3471"},"modified":"2016-01-17T22:30:47","modified_gmt":"2016-01-17T22:30:47","slug":"the-tube-at-a-standstill-why-transportation-for-london-stopped-people-walking-up-the-escalators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/17\/the-tube-at-a-standstill-why-transportation-for-london-stopped-people-walking-up-the-escalators\/","title":{"rendered":"The tube at a standstill: why Transportation for London stopped people walking up the escalators"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2016\/jan\/16\/the-tube-at-a-standstill-why-tfl-stopped-people-walking-up-the-escalators\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/df302345b4de286a182cfb5534c159ce7d25a09b\/45_60_3898_2341\/master\/3898.jpg?w=625&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>In the execution of their own daily miracles, London\u2019s 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\u2019s main route out and looked up, they saw something frankly outrageous: on the escalators just ahead of them, dozens of people were\u00a0<em>standing on the left<\/em>.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"element element-rich-link element--thumbnail element-rich-link--upgraded\" data-component=\"rich-link\" data-link-name=\"rich-link-2 | 1\">\n<div class=\"rich-link tone-news--item \">\n<div class=\"rich-link__container\">\n<div class=\"rich-link__image-container u-responsive-ratio\">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 \u201cescalumps\u201d; here, they can expect the public humiliation of a tutting sound just over their shoulder. \u201cPassengers just don\u2019t like having these things changed,\u201d says Celia Harrison, a <a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk\/transport\" data-link-name=\"auto-linked-tag\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\">Transport<\/a> for London (TfL) customer strategy analyst, and one of the key people responsible for this heretical deviation from the norm. \u201cI\u2019ve worked on stations for many years. So I was aware that whatever we did people weren\u2019t going to be comfortable about having their routine disturbed.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>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\u2019s 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 <a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-england-london-34926581\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">arranging a three-week trial<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The theory, if counterintuitive, is also pretty compelling. Think about it. It\u2019s 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\u2019t 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 \u2013 a phenomenon described by crowd control guru Dr John J Fruin as \u201cthe human ellipse\u201d, which means that they are largely unwilling to stand with someone directly adjacent to them or on the first step in front or behind &#8211; the theoretical capacity of the escalator halves again. Surely it was worth trying to haul back a bit of that wasted space.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2016\/jan\/16\/the-tube-at-a-standstill-why-tfl-stopped-people-walking-up-the-escalators\">The tube at a standstill: why TfL stopped people walking up the escalators | UK news | The Guardian<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the execution of their own daily miracles, London\u2019s 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. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-TZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3472,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471\/revisions\/3472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}