Eric wrote in :

On 2013-09-15, John Levine wrote:
I don't know for sure, but wonder whether people walking up the
escalator tend to stay further apart than those who stand still? If
so, walking may actually reduce the capacity.

It may reduce the number on the escalator at any specific moment, but
it's unlikely to reduce the number tranported from the bottom to the
top per unit of time, since people who walk spend less time on the
esclator than people who don't.

What you need to measure is how many get off per unit time and nothing
else. How much time each spends on the escalator is not relevant to
that.

There used to be - maybe still is - a chap at Victoria underground who
would stand at the bottom of the escalators at busy times saying something
like 'come along now, two on every step', and that did seem to work in
clearing the backlog - ie two people standing on every step.

Of course if they could all then be persuaded to march up in perfect
synchrony (all together now, left, right, left, right) he'd probably get
even more throughput.

Peter

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