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This anti-escalator movement sounds like complete nonsense to me. First of all, office buildings almost never have escalators. They never did, and they never will. When a company buys an old mall or movie theatre or something else that had an escalator, it doesn't surprise me that they might gut them and not replace them, but it's not because this generation doesn't want escalators. They didn't build escalators in offices in the 50s and 60s either. This is just retail space undergoing renovation.

They're an expensive maintenance chore. A broken down escalator drags down the whole property

“An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.”

- Mitch Hedberg

Escalators do fail in ways other than becoming stairs.

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/10/catastrophic-escalator-fa...

One issue that isn't capture by that quote is that an escalator cannot be used while being repaired. If the maintenance person is away while the escalator is part-way through being repaired it's very reasonable to see a "Temporarily Out of Order" sign.

Also escalators tend to be pretty bad at being stairs if you're not fit and healthy (and even then…), they usually have much higher steps and sharper edges than normal stairs, and are thus significantly less accessible when they're not operating.

I've always loved this joke and basically quote it verbatim in my head when I encounter a broken-down escalator, but there's actually a whole chain of silliness that prevents most escalators from being used as stairs when they're not running. You see, the management will usually block them off for "safety reasons", which always seemed kind of silly to me, but eventually I ran across a facilities person who was able to explain it to me: stairs have a standard riser height per step, and everyone is used to walking up and down stairs of that height. Escalators, for whatever reason, are different. The stairs are taller. And people tend to trip when using them as stairs. So they minimize risk by just saying "go use the elevator or regular stairs." It's still kind of silly, but I kind of get it. What I don't get is why the escalator manufacturers don't make the risers the same height as normal stairs. I also don't really get why we apparently don't trip when walking up or down a running escalator, but it's possible the answer is that it doesn't really matter, because if you can't handle the step height on the escalator, you just stand still. :shrug:

> What I don't get is why the escalator manufacturers don't make the risers the same height as normal stairs.

The taller the step, the shorter the escalator. Doing that saves space and money.

Eh, if you mean "shorter" in number of links in the chain, sure, but obviously the overall amount of materials that go into the escalator isn't appreciably affected, and an escalator with larger, chunkier steps must necessarily take up more space due to the thickness. You could argue that reducing the number of moving parts is desirable, and I'm sure that's true to a point, but I'd be surprised if the operational burden and cost of an escalator with 51 7 inch steps is significantly different than one with 45 8 inch steps.

Then again, there's some reason they do it, and I'd guess cost is part of the equation. I just don't think it's quite as simple as you're stating it.

Edit: I'd actually bet that a large part of the calculation is cost of retooling and changing the standard, which would involve having a whole line of incompatible parts to manage.

>An escalator can never break

This reminds me of the first time I went to /r/gore. I'll just say the scene involved an escalator.

BART takes this philosophy truly to heart.

Are you suggesting they just chrome plate the stairways and there are actually no motors underneath at all?

I think he meant they don't actually do this.

Yeah. To paint in broad strokes, the big cultural shifts from Boomers to Millennials seem to center around Boomers defining success and luxury very traditionally: maximizing ownership and indulgence, minimizing effort. Millennials have seen how unhealthy and wasteful those lifestyle choices are, and have largely freed themselves from the social pressures that drove them.

Of course, all is relative. Millennials have invented their own type of shallow success-signaling (social media), excessive wealth signaling (focused on experiences - trips, food, etc. - instead of possessions), and avoidance of effort (delivery services and other gig-economy apps). Society changes, but people don't really change.

Delivery services and trips are indulgence and minimizing effort. The only noticeable difference between the two is the reduced focus on ownership, but that’s more likely related to the fact that millennials got screwed by the Great Recession more than them being oh so woke.

I will belive that when I see workers walking up stairs, not just the type A's looking at their Apple Watch step counter, instead of escalators ;)

I think its mostly landlords wanting to look like office buildings not retail space.

YouTube is quite proud of the employee-only slide they have between two floors (might be gone, haven't visited in a couple of years)

I think, like many fitness things, it's actually as much of a discipline thing as anything else.

When we're confronted with an escalator next to stairs, we take the escalator out of laziness, even though we wish we didn't.

But we'd actually prefer there not to be an escalator at all, so we'd have to walk.

Same thing as when you choose not to keep snacks at your desk because you know you'll eat them.

We prefer an environment that nudges us in the right direction, precisely because we don't always have the discipline we wish we had.

Guess I must be a weirdo. Given a set of stairs next to an escalator, I always the stairs.

I also lean towards the stairs (or at least not just standing on the escalator), but in my experience it's like 80/20 or "worse" between people who go for the escalator vs the stairs. Of the escalator crowd though, there are a good chunk who prefer to walk rather than stand.

Stairs are faster and better exercise than (standing on) escalators. I guess you can make the argument that walking up escalators is faster, but stairs are almost always wider and less congested, whereas getting stuck standing on an escalator happens all the time anywhere busy.

I always do this, it typically happens at airports, and I take pleasure in arriving at the other end faster as well. I'm going to sit on a plane for hours why would I want to pass up the opportunity to get some meager exercise beforehand?

If I'm going to sit in a cramped, poorly ventilated space, I'm doing everything in my power to avoid sweating beforehand, including taking the escalator.

I've had the opposite problem before - I preferred to take the stairs, but they shoved them off in the corner and put the elevator in the center of the building.

i actually prefer a wide escalator so i can walk up/down (and around the standers) and get both speed and a workout. =)

I live in London, where escalator lane discipline is very good - mostly because if you fail to stand on the right you will get jostled by 80kg of fast moving commuter.

It's a culture shock going to places where people stand on both sides blocking the way through.

I don’t think I’ve ever been in an office building with escalators. I think this is more just a result of them taking a shopping center, which usually has escalators, and turning it into an office, which doesn’t. They’re not really a practical way to get around; unless you have a rigid “stand to one side” rule (as on the London Underground) they’re slower than stairs.

>It's the age of Fitbit and walking around dense city centers

What? Most people still don’t live in dense urban city centers. Look at LA and the Bay Area. Both are still dominated by driving.

> White-collar workers today spend so much time sitting

It would take a lot to convince me that white-collar workers of the past spent less time sitting.