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LA: 0.46 meters/s (1 mph)
Hong Kong: 0.75 meters/s (1.7 mph)
Kyiv: 0.9 meters/s (2 mph)
Kinda slower than I expected in general. I assume the speed is mostly dictated by boarding/alighting safety.
Kyiv subway stations are also air raid shelters.[1] They may have decided that running the escalators fast to get people to safety is worth the risk.
[1] https://visitkyiv.com/visitor-essentials/kyiv-shelter-map/
That was standard across major Soviet cities.
They were running much faster than the “west” in 2015-2020 too, so I doubt that is the reason.
The Soviet Union used metros as shelters long before it broke apart. If it works for a nuclear war it works even better for conventional attacks.
I was wondering if there’s something different about the escalator manufacturer or design. Like longer landing areas or boarding area with extended hand rails. If you had any familiarity with them.
When building them, they probably didn’t expect to be hiding from Russian attacks.
That would be a naive reading of the history of the USSR.
Yeah, weren't subway stations in the USSR dual-purpose nuclear shelters?
3mph is a pretty solid walk. 2 doesn't sound bad for an escalator.
The longest escalators in the Eastern hemisphere, at Wheaton Metro, which I've ridden many times, are apparently the same speed according to Wikipedia. So my gut feeling of maybe they did that because maybe they're short doesn't hold
That's what smartphoness are for ...
Decades of fecal matters gumming up the gears
I remember taking the escalators in Moscow in the 80s and thinking they were freakishly fast. According to this article they are not that fast. I wonder if they lowered the speed or it was just my lack of familiarity with long escalators.
You are not wrong. I have tried some of the faster ones in Prague and Kiev. The difference in numbers does not sound like much but it sure does in real life.
The speed combined with the wind can be quite wild.
You might also enjoy this comparison with London:
https://youtu.be/UWJot1Q2LgY
The video also explains that escalator speed is now set via international standards.
That video is surprisingly interesting.
Thank you.
I thought the escalators in the Budapest metro were pretty damn fast. I went there in 2005, not sure if they've changed them since.
I lived in DTLA for several years and regularly used Little Tokyo/Arts District station. It was not uncommon during peak hours to see people - myself included sliding down the railing.
I am 43 years old now and was much younger then (27-35) but I remember these days fondly. Now I live in NYC where public transit it so much better that this and many other issues that plague LA (especially the redline) do not exist but I do miss those days and look back on them fondly.
I still have at least 1 scar I can attribute to trying this whilst wearing the wrong pants (in terms of fabric).
Unfortunately NY transit sucks if you're disabled and can't deal with stairs.
I didn't know this but given the multiple: "This is an accessible station" alerts it makes sense. Hopefully this is something that can change soon.
A bunch of the congestion fee $ is going towards more elevators (and maintenance).
The current plan aims to have the subway system 95% accessible by 2055.
<https://www.mta.info/project/station-accessibility-upgrades>
(Of the old US subway systems, MTA seems to be the most lackadaisical in actually making their system accessible.)
Worth adding: "accessible" is a real-time status, not a fixed property. A station with an elevator is not the same as a station you can enter step-free today; an outage quietly takes it off the list for days, which is what those alerts are for. The data that would actually help riders is elevator status history, and almost nobody publishes it.
I check step-free routes against dated street-level imagery, and the failure mode is nearly always staleness rather than absence: a 2017 photo shows a staircase where a map said "short walk", a newer image shows a ramp the map still tags as steps. Same problem in transit, just with a maintenance crew instead of a construction crew.
I vouched I have no idea why your message would be flagged as it seems quite reasonable statement about a nuance of what's being discussed.
Would aggregated user provided data like OpenStreetMap or something like that help there? Feels like a few dedicated users updating their cities would go a long way
How uncivilized. Never saw anything like this in DC.
Yeah of course. Because DC, the seat of f-ing government, attracts the boot lickers and the compliant like no tomorrow. The metro could be on fire and people would go through the fire to exit before they went out an entrance.
Many years ago I ran out of gas in DC traffic but was luckily able to coast the shoulder to an exit ramp and make it to a gas station across the intersection only barely running a red light in the process.
I was followed by not one, but two "very clearly law enforcement but not beat cop" types who proceeded to heckle me about how riding the shoulder is illegal and it's a $500 fine and blah, blah, blah. I was young then and just kinda shrugged it off. These days I'm old and jaded and hate people like that and I don't know if I'd have the self control to de-escalate that kind of thing.
The Little Tokyo stop had no stairs or escalators before 2023, since it was at grade then. Do you mean a different stop?
Also, the busiest stations with huge escalator length, like Union Station or Wilshire/Vermont, have so much open space that escalators are rarely a bottleneck in my experience. 7th St/Metro station is crazy crowded, but the escalators are short and people usually give you room to run down the escalator.
The only station I worry about for future congestion is the Grand Ave station, which has no escalators, but is so deep that you have to take an elevator since walking stairs is not reasonable except for emergencies.
TY, you are correct; it was Civic Center/Grand Park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_Center/Grand_Park_statio...
Thank you, I got to do down memory lane checking this.
It was not just this one, but the one before it from the street into the station that is IIRC at even more of an incline given that its on that hill.
Are they the bottleneck? How many fewer/additional injuries would result from increasing escalator speeds? (Do people get good thinking done during their climbs and descents?)
Anyway, using the escalator would mean not jogging up/down the stairs as is my instinct.
According to the video from clan, speeding up escalators above about .75m/s results people leaving gaps between each other, so the speed increase is negated by a volume decrease.
Thanks. Wonder if the gaps (and speed) increase satisfaction and/or even save transmission of a couple communicable diseases here and there.
Wonder if this article was inspired by this youtube video that came out a few weeks back. One of my top 5 watches of the month I'd hazard.
Where are the fastest escalators in the world? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWJot1Q2LgY
Some stations in Prague were at 200 cm/s, according to some sources [0] before EU regulations cut it to a maximum of 90 cm/s (TFA puts Prague at 65 cm/s today, and you know, I'm not on a Prague escalator right now, so I suppose I'll trust them).
I can't find a better source for just how fast the Prague escalators were, but as an occasional user they seemed more than twice as fast as London or Paris which TFA gives as 65-75 cm/s.
They felt dangerous to step onto, but I never saw anyone actually have an accident. The metro in Prague is also deeper than most.
[0] https://www.expats.cz/czech-news/article/prague-s-speedy-len...
Borderline off-topic, but Prague also have a "Paternoster Lift" (https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/paternoster-lift-at-prag...) that seems well-maintained that I've always wanted to visit, but haven't had the chance yet.
There's also one in the Vienna city hall that's open to the public. The free guided tour of city hall is also worth the time.
I'm a little surprised there's no data here from the Montréal or Toronto metro systems! I think Canada has the same escalator speed limit as the US, so I expect them to be similar.