Article
Version 1
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Escalator Etiquette: Stand or Walk? A Systems Analysis
Version 1
: Received: 13 May 2024 / Approved: 15 May 2024 / Online: 15 May 2024 (05:43:00 CEST)
How to cite: Fu, M. C. Escalator Etiquette: Stand or Walk? A Systems Analysis. Preprints 2024, 2024051001. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202405.1001.v1 Fu, M. C. Escalator Etiquette: Stand or Walk? A Systems Analysis. Preprints 2024, 2024051001. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202405.1001.v1
Abstract
Users of escalators and moving walkways with sufficient space to accommodate two lanes of users often follow an implied etiquette for the two lanes: one for walking and one for standing (in the US, China, and many countries, the convention is ``walk left, stand right"). When there is high volume, e.g., when exiting a subway or train station or at the conclusion of an athletic event, the escalators often experience bottleneck congestion that constitutes the primary source of delay. It has been suggested that during such high-congestion periods it would be more efficient if everyone just stood in both lanes, with empirical evidence used to support this counterintuitive finding. Simple deterministic queueing models are used to show under what conditions such results hold and also to provide further insights regarding tradeoffs between performance metrics as a function of the distribution of walkers and standers, which could inform practical implementation policies to increase efficiency.
Keywords
escalator etiquette; queueing theory; scheduling; systems analysis
Subject
Business, Economics and Management, Business and Management
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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