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| Escalators in Holborn Station |
So we can see that
London Underground is trialling new
etiquette rules for the escalator going up at Holborn station.
From TFL Press Release
LONDON
UNDERGROUND TO PILOT NEW ESCALATOR ARRANGEMENT AT HOLBORN TUBE STATION
One of four escalators
will be 'standing only'
at all times for six months with another
standing only at some times of day.
Customers
at Holborn station will be asked to stand on both sides of two 'up' escalators,
in plans announced today to reduce
congestion at the station.
From
18 April the new arrangements will
be in place for around six months, with a range of signage and customer
information encouraging people to fill up the escalators by standing on both
sides. The other 'up' escalator will still be available for people who want to
walk.
Behavioural science
A
variety of messages, developed with the help of the behavioural science
department at the London School of Economics, will be tested at different times
to see which work best. These include standard instructions to customers and
'light' messages that play on words about standing.
These
will be communicated in various ways,
including using a talking projection of a staff member, electronic versions of
the triangular 'stand on the right' signs that customers pass as they travel up
the escalator, signs on the floors, foot prints on the escalator steps,
handprints on the handrails and station announcements.
Record numbers
Peter
McNaught, Operations Director at London Underground, said: 'It may not seem
right that you can go quicker by
standing still, but our experiments at Holborn have proved that it can be
true. This new pilot will help us find out if we can influence customers to
stand on both sides in the long term, using just signage and information.
'Anyone
who wants to walk on the other escalators will be free to do so, but we hope
that with record numbers using the Tube, customers will enjoy being part of
this experiment to find the most efficient ways of getting around.'
More capacity and
reliability
LU invests £1.3bn a
year
in its capital programme, with major stations, trains, track and signalling
being modernised or replaced to provide more capacity and reliability for a
growing city. The next major phase of this work will bring faster, more
frequent and more reliable journeys to millions of passengers who use the
Circle, District, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City lines.
Redevelopment
work to increase capacity at key stations and make them step-free is also
underway at a number of stations including Victoria, Tottenham Court Road and
Bond Street. More than half of LU's 270 stations have now been modernised or
refurbished.
In
addition, when the Elizabeth/Crossrail line fully opens from 2019, more than
half a million customers a day will be served by a fleet of brand new 200m long
trains at 40 stations, including 10 newly built in London.
More customers
The
London Underground convention is for customers to stand on the right of
escalators, allowing others to walk on the left. However, at stations with very
long escalators, such as Holborn, few customers choose to walk, meaning that much of left-hand-side of the
escalator is unused.
A previous test held
in November and December 2015,
proved that as many as 30% more
customers could use an escalator in the busiest parts of the day if they
stood on both sides.
During
that experiment, extra staff were brought in to ask customers to stand on both
sides. A similar arrangement will be in place at the start of the new trial,
after which the staff will not be present and LU will be testing whether
customers will change their behaviour in the longer term through use of the
signs and messages and force of habit.
The
'standing only' arrangement will be in
use for the two escalators closest to Central line platforms
Holborn
Tube station is one of the busiest on the Tube network, with more than 56m customers each year.
The
Holborn escalators leading to the ticket
hall are 23.4 metres tall, so most Holborn customers will prefer to stand
on the 'up' escalators rather than walk. Research has shown that for escalators
with a vertical height of more than 18.5m it might be more effective to encourage
standing on both sides because few customers will want to walk.
Example messages:
Standard
·
Stand
on both sides
·
Stand
on the left and the right
·
Please
don't walk on this escalator
Light
·
Standing
room only
·
Standing?
Outstanding!
·
United
we stand
Results of previous
three-week trial:
·
Before
the previous trial, calculations showed the Holborn escalators would normally
each carry around 80 people per minute, with more standing than walking.
Theoretically LU expected to see this rise to more than 110 people, with the
escalators filled with standing passengers on both sides.
·
The
results exceeded expectations, with a recorded
increase of 30%. An escalator that carried
an average of 2,500 customers
between 8.30 and 9.30am on a normal day, carried around 3,250 when it was
designated standing only for the same five-day period.
·
'Station
control' - temporarily preventing customers from entering the station because
of crowding - was only implemented on one day during the first week of tests
and not at all in the other two weeks. Prior to the tests implementing station
control was something which happened several times a week. This is a good
indicator that flows had improved.
Interesting stuff!
This news needs to be spread widely because not every commuter will be aware of
the new rules being implemented at Holborn station. If the trial is successful
then we will see the system being expanded to other stations.
Wikipedia article on Escalator etiquette
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Image attribution
By renaissancechambara - http://www.flickr.com/photos/renaissancechambara/2267250649/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6270642