Is it inefficient to walk up the escalator?

A study in London found 74.9 per cent of people choose to stand instead of walking, especially on the longer ones. With this ‘stand on the right, walk on the left’ rule, we’re giving up 50 per cent of the space on our escalators for roughly 25 per cent of our commuters.

Look for this problem next time during rush hour where the “standing” side of the escalators ends up with a line of people trying to get on. It may seem counterintuitive, but people who are walking up escalators to save seconds off their commute are actually slowing everyone else down.

Efficiency aside, there’s another reason why walking on escalators might be a bad idea—safety. Escalator accidents are much more common than you think.

A CBC investigation found that escalator accidents happen every second day in the Montreal Metro. In the U.S., about 10,000 escalator-related injuries end in emergency room visits every year.

Many of those victims were likely walking. A  study in Tokyo found almost 60 per cent of escalator accidents between 2013 and 2014 resulted from people using escalators improperly, which includes people walking or running on them.

Here is the full story, via Michelle Dawson.  Walking up the escalator remains time efficient, however, if those choosing to walk have much higher valuations of time than those who choose to stand.  Might that be the case?

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