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.
Op is probably referring to the history of conflict between Ukraine and Russia specifically, for example when Ukraine lost its war of independence against the Red Army. Stalin purged Ukraine quite thoroughly then by starvation.
No, but they did everything else: Engineered famines (the Holodomor, the Ukrainian Holocaust), gulags, and mass executions (Khruschev's first major job, being Stalin's liquidator in Ukraine).
Yes, they are used as air raid shelters, but they were designed like that in the first place. Some of them lie really deep - especially the ones in the city center.
Kyiv metro is one of the deepest in the world. We have one station that is 105 meters deep. So even with fast escalators, it feels like an eternity to go up and down there.
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
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.
The salient bit: The Prague escalators were made by the Soviets and ran at 0.9m/s so it's likely the ones I rode in Moscow were similar. They are "illegal" now and being replaced.
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).
NYC has a lot of money, but this is a huge project, involving continuous disruption to a system that must continue carrying 6 million people per day throughout its completion. The NYC subway has more stations than any other metro system on earth, with 424 stations, of which 133 are already accessible. Hitting 95% by 2055 means around 10/year on average for the next 29 years. While it could always be better, for a system that is over 120 years old, this seems not too terrible to me.
Also, not every subway station is equal. Some see significantly higher ridership than others, or are more critical transfer points, and so can be prioritized to have more impact sooner. It seems like that is what they’re doing.
> "Your grandkids might some day dream of having accessible subway stations" is such a civilizational failure that we've just silently accepted
I agree that the timelines are a real problem, but that's for the long tail. The major transfer stations are mostly there today and the remaining few are on track to get there in the next few years.
NYC has a lot of stations. There are some that basically cannot be made fully compliant with the full spectrum of ADA accessibility requirements, which are actually on the more comprehensive side of the spectrum compared to other countries.
Some of it makes more sense when you see it. There's a station built underneath the pillars of a bridge. Right now they're trying to figure out how to add a second entrance and exit as a first step, but as you can imagine operating on a station under a bridge is hard. It's also the only station in the neighborhood, so you can't just shut it down for a year. Getting it to the point of having full elevator/escalator and other ADA compliant requirements for new construction is basically out of the question without having the most out of control construction project you've seen.
So the long tail of stations are going to take a very long time to get updated, if ever.
The MTA also has far more stations than any other US system, indeed more than any other metro system on Earth.
The NYC subway has 424 stations. The next highest in the US is the L in Chicago, with 146, followed by DC, with 98.
Seems natural it would take longer, though that is scant comfort to the people who need them. NYC has 133 accessible stations, which is 91% of the L’s total station count.
I remember I extensively used Berlin public transport nearly 30y ago and was annoyed how you couldn't use it with a stroller because of the lack of "accessibility"
I then realized "accessibility" translates straight to: mobility with little children. which affects many many additional people, but it's rarely in the public discourse anywhere.
in Paris in 2019 I then saw parents with tiny light-weight sit-on micro scooters, as a creative work-around to the parental public mobility challenge.
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
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.
I feel that you just need to accept the fact that you have no idea what America is. There are 300 million people who live here but you act like you're a tourist who landed in Las Vegas and thinks that the whole country is apparently really obsessed with slot machines and topless bars. I can't really change what you prefer but I assure you that there are plenty of us here who do not care for your circles where apparently everyone curtsies at each other.
> 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.
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.
> [increasing speeds would save] about 670,000 hours a year.
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.
> or even save transmission of a couple communicable diseases
There is probably an upper bound to the ‘saves infection’ effect of the increases speed and resulting greater commuter spacing. As the speed goes up people will want to hold the hand rail, and collect each other’s diseases.
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.
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.
I once worked in a Japanese tower for a few weeks. The office was on the 6th floor. I'd play beat-the-elevator with my coworkers. They'd get in the machine, as I casually leaned against the wall.
As soon as the doors closed, I'd sprint up the stairs, with the intent of lounging against the wall, pretending I am not breathing hard, and pretending to look at my watch.
Unfortunately, I rarely made it past the 5th floor sprinting. But there was still enough time to walk up the last flight and implement my evil plan.
My coworkers just looked at me with their "gaijin" expression.
I did similar at university. Only two flights of stairs, but one time I pressed the Up button on the middle floor so they got an extra stop and more time to regret their choice :-) Fun times.
It's interesting that escalators generally run slower in the US since their inventor was American: Jesse W. Reno.
It does seem like a bit of a trend in engineering that the first to get there set slower standards that others then copy, speed up and otherwise improve upon. See Britain and trains.
On that note, the very same Jesse W. Reno tried to build a spiral escalator in London in 1906 in Holloway Road tube station, the shaft for which still exists today. It never made it into production aparrently, but goes with the trend.
There are quite a few confounding factors at play in Britain with regards trains. The UK is quite small and infrastructure like railways takes up space and competes with roads and so on. There is the need for bridges and tunnels to accommodate crossings with other methods of transport or itself or to traverse topography.
A first stab at really high speed rail here called APT Advanced Passenger Train involved engines and carriages that tilted. It seems that the journalists on the demo run were so pissed (drunk) that it was given horrific reviews and the idea was shelved. That might have been our really fast railway links.
We did get HST 125 (High Speed Train) which in the early '80s did look pretty fancy compared to the older blunt nosed locomotives that they replaced.
it was a little tongue in cheek, but one concrete example of what I meant is the UK system being on a narrower gague than most of the rest of the world because it was built early and is next to impossible to change, meaning taller double decker trains aren't possible.
It's the width of a Roman Chariot - what's wrong with that 8) It was the first and that's the way it goes.
Not sure why you need a double decker train and I think you could if you really packed people in. You can just make them twice as long. Railways don't have the same constraints as nearly anything else.
I remember the carriages of the later half of C20 and each person had a huge amount of space. In one design you had a corridor running the length of the carriage with a series of bays with seating for up to four or five on each side, loads of leg room and a luggage rack above. Separate door to the platform for each bay. Obviously you had to puff furiously on your pipe or fags to fill the space with healthy smoke.
I do enjoy riding on double decker trains - as you say the view is amazing. We do have lots of double decker buses and a ride through the country at the front of the top deck is a delight.
I remember taking the bus from Plymouth to Millbrook (mid 1990s), which included a trip over the River Tamar on the ferry. I can't remember if it was one bus or two to get there and back.
One year I recall a harsh winter and icy roads. On one trip, I was sitting in one of the top front seats. It was early evening and I was heading home to Plymouth, idly watching the stiff, whitish countryside through the haze on the windows. The bus lost grip on a gentle incline and started to spin gently but, well, I nearly needed to change my trousers. We did a good two complete spins until a wheel hit a bank and we came to a halt facing mostly backwards. "Drives", made a polite announcement and reversed down to the bottom and then did a very gentle 10 point turn and cracked on.
Fair enough - we are missing out on some lovely views.
Can confirm the Kyiv metro escalators are both significantly faster and generally longer than London - the combination can be a little scary the first few times.
What fascinates me is SF. The epicenter of world's future, but when physically there it doesn't quite look "futuristic". I'd say SF is more charming that cyberpunk. The roads, the homes, even my personal favorites Hayes street and Alamo square park don't really feel like the future is here. Let alone slow escalators.
But as soon as I spoke with a few people out there, it hit my me like a truck. It's the concentration of the people who are literally building the future that make SF what it is.
SF has laws that make it a multi-year process just to get the permits to refurbish a building, before any construction even starts. The end result is that most of the city is frozen in the 70s.
A lot of these stations have at least two up and down lanes. It seems you could have a fast and slow lane and adjust speed and coordination requirements accordingly.
Have a look at Germany Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It is infuriating to use. It might be the case of a relaxed and gentle as a sunrise software operator. Maybe some people enter it for a coaching session to find inner peace?
92 comments
[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 32.3 ms ] threadHong 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.
[1] https://visitkyiv.com/visitor-essentials/kyiv-shelter-map/
When building them, they probably didn’t expect to be hiding from Russian attacks.
The USSR didn’t bomb it’s citizens all that often did it?
The building of the subway wasn’t done by an independent Ukraine though, it was done under the rule of the USSR.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyiv_Metro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact_invasion_of_Czecho...
Kyiv metro is one of the deepest in the world. We have one station that is 105 meters deep. So even with fast escalators, it feels like an eternity to go up and down there.
The speed combined with the wind can be quite wild.
You might also enjoy this comparison with London:
https://youtu.be/UWJot1Q2LgY
Thank you.
The salient bit: The Prague escalators were made by the Soviets and ran at 0.9m/s so it's likely the ones I rode in Moscow were similar. They are "illegal" now and being replaced.
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).
<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.)
"Your grandkids might some day dream of having accessible subway stations" is such a civilizational failure that we've just silently accepted.
Also, not every subway station is equal. Some see significantly higher ridership than others, or are more critical transfer points, and so can be prioritized to have more impact sooner. It seems like that is what they’re doing.
I agree that the timelines are a real problem, but that's for the long tail. The major transfer stations are mostly there today and the remaining few are on track to get there in the next few years.
NYC has a lot of stations. There are some that basically cannot be made fully compliant with the full spectrum of ADA accessibility requirements, which are actually on the more comprehensive side of the spectrum compared to other countries.
Some of it makes more sense when you see it. There's a station built underneath the pillars of a bridge. Right now they're trying to figure out how to add a second entrance and exit as a first step, but as you can imagine operating on a station under a bridge is hard. It's also the only station in the neighborhood, so you can't just shut it down for a year. Getting it to the point of having full elevator/escalator and other ADA compliant requirements for new construction is basically out of the question without having the most out of control construction project you've seen.
So the long tail of stations are going to take a very long time to get updated, if ever.
The dutch became a bicycle paradise with the same strategy. They just started a couple generations ago.
The problem is only when you set a goal of say 2035 but don’t plan to do anything until 2033. Then it’s clear the plan is to give up in 2031.
The NYC subway has 424 stations. The next highest in the US is the L in Chicago, with 146, followed by DC, with 98.
Seems natural it would take longer, though that is scant comfort to the people who need them. NYC has 133 accessible stations, which is 91% of the L’s total station count.
mobilitY for parents with little children or people in wheelchairs was "not a priority"
it's not that NYC subway was a novelty isn't it?
I then realized "accessibility" translates straight to: mobility with little children. which affects many many additional people, but it's rarely in the public discourse anywhere.
in Paris in 2019 I then saw parents with tiny light-weight sit-on micro scooters, as a creative work-around to the parental public mobility challenge.
but 2055? ooof.
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
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.
(and physician, heal thyself)
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.
Thank you, I got to do down memory lane checking this.
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.
There is probably an upper bound to the ‘saves infection’ effect of the increases speed and resulting greater commuter spacing. As the speed goes up people will want to hold the hand rail, and collect each other’s diseases.
Where are the fastest escalators in the world? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWJot1Q2LgY
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...
As soon as the doors closed, I'd sprint up the stairs, with the intent of lounging against the wall, pretending I am not breathing hard, and pretending to look at my watch.
Unfortunately, I rarely made it past the 5th floor sprinting. But there was still enough time to walk up the last flight and implement my evil plan.
My coworkers just looked at me with their "gaijin" expression.
It does seem like a bit of a trend in engineering that the first to get there set slower standards that others then copy, speed up and otherwise improve upon. See Britain and trains.
On that note, the very same Jesse W. Reno tried to build a spiral escalator in London in 1906 in Holloway Road tube station, the shaft for which still exists today. It never made it into production aparrently, but goes with the trend.
There are quite a few confounding factors at play in Britain with regards trains. The UK is quite small and infrastructure like railways takes up space and competes with roads and so on. There is the need for bridges and tunnels to accommodate crossings with other methods of transport or itself or to traverse topography.
A first stab at really high speed rail here called APT Advanced Passenger Train involved engines and carriages that tilted. It seems that the journalists on the demo run were so pissed (drunk) that it was given horrific reviews and the idea was shelved. That might have been our really fast railway links.
We did get HST 125 (High Speed Train) which in the early '80s did look pretty fancy compared to the older blunt nosed locomotives that they replaced.
Is that what you meant?
Not sure why you need a double decker train and I think you could if you really packed people in. You can just make them twice as long. Railways don't have the same constraints as nearly anything else.
I remember the carriages of the later half of C20 and each person had a huge amount of space. In one design you had a corridor running the length of the carriage with a series of bays with seating for up to four or five on each side, loads of leg room and a luggage rack above. Separate door to the platform for each bay. Obviously you had to puff furiously on your pipe or fags to fill the space with healthy smoke.
Double decker trains I just find fun for some reason, and you get slightly better views riding up top over fences and walls and such.
I remember taking the bus from Plymouth to Millbrook (mid 1990s), which included a trip over the River Tamar on the ferry. I can't remember if it was one bus or two to get there and back.
One year I recall a harsh winter and icy roads. On one trip, I was sitting in one of the top front seats. It was early evening and I was heading home to Plymouth, idly watching the stiff, whitish countryside through the haze on the windows. The bus lost grip on a gentle incline and started to spin gently but, well, I nearly needed to change my trousers. We did a good two complete spins until a wheel hit a bank and we came to a halt facing mostly backwards. "Drives", made a polite announcement and reversed down to the bottom and then did a very gentle 10 point turn and cracked on.
Fair enough - we are missing out on some lovely views.
But as soon as I spoke with a few people out there, it hit my me like a truck. It's the concentration of the people who are literally building the future that make SF what it is.
I can't be the only one fascinated by this!
This is fun, because Soviet escalators were essentially copied from British escalators when the Moscow subway was constructed.
Seriously, tho, you must've not seen that people die from escalators.