LA Metro has some of the slowest escalators
basin.la
basin.la
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.
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.
There was also a respect that I cant forget; almost like it was a rhythm. Never a rush to beat someone else to the train. I remember that for a time due to our schedules we would meet at the top, smoke a J and chat for as long as we could then slide down and catch the redline (now called the B Line*) and part ways.
Note: He got the girl. we all lost contact - hope he/they are dong well.
\Note: I wonder if the redline was renamed because of the level of violence or if it was because of the purple line expansion.
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 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...
The speed combined with the wind can be quite wild.
You might also enjoy this comparison with London:
The video also explains that escalator speed is now set via international standards.
Thank you.
The salient bit: The Prague escalators were made by the Soviets and ran at 0.9m/s (aka very fast) so it's likely the ones I rode in Moscow were similar. They are "illegal" now and being replaced.
Hong 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.
The Warsaw Pact was the eastern bloc's answer to NATO. They were also in Comecon, their version of the EEC.
Not to be confused with Comicon.
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.
Where are the fastest escalators in the world? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWJot1Q2LgY
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.
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.
I just don't understand people who are content with just standing there on the escalator. And I mean able-bodied people, about to sit for hours on an airplane.
Or given a non-airport station, I've found myself standing on the escalator during my morning commute ever since I ramped up my exercise routine. So when you see me, I'm standing because I hit a PR on my squats earlier that morning, or because I finished a 14k run less than an hour ago.
The people you are referring to are a small minority. I'm usually the only one taking the steps.
If you're really in bad shape, there's an elevator.
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.
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.
Seriously, tho, you must've not seen that people die from escalators.