LA Metro has some of the slowest escalators on Earth (basin.la)

29 pointsby big_toast2 days ago13 comments

arionhardison an hour ago

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).

TylerE 32 minutes ago

Unfortunately NY transit sucks if you're disabled and can't deal with stairs.

gniv an hour ago

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.

clan 23 minutes ago

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.

You might also enjoy this comparison with London:

https://youtu.be/UWJot1Q2LgY

The video also explains that escalator speed is now set via international standards.

qurren 20 minutes ago

I thought the escalators in the Budapest metro were pretty damn fast. I went there in 2005, not sure if they've changed them since.

Barbing 16 minutes ago

> [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.

talon8635 an hour ago

Decades of fecal matters gumming up the gears

Neywiny an hour ago

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

big_toast 2 days ago

LA: 0.46 meters/s (1 mph)

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.

Animats an hour ago

Kyiv subway stations are also air raid shelters.[1] They may have decided that running the escalators fast to get people to safety is worth the risk.

[1] https://visitkyiv.com/visitor-essentials/kyiv-shelter-map/

nephihaha 20 minutes ago

That was standard across major Soviet cities.

jen20 16 minutes ago

They were running much faster than the “west” in 2015-2020 too, so I doubt that is the reason.

amelius an hour ago

That's what smartphoness are for ...