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Comment by mdxchhcxdm | Hacker News Reader

“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

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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.

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