On 01/12/2015 11:05, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
-sept
ember.org, at 10:36:49 on Tue, 1 Dec 2015, Recliner
remarked:

I'd like to see the figures in a peer-reviewed publication

http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/assets/sn...f/2002-11-01Go
utamDutta.pdf

Isn't that the same one I mentioned way up-thread?

Yes, but Clive must have missed it.

I did miss it, so now much obliged to both of you. This is described as
a working paper and so probably not peer reviewed, or at least not yet.
But it does look like competent research and makes interesting
reading, with some touches of light humour. People here will appreciate
in section 2 "these escalators ... are designed to last for a long
period of time".

Some of their conclusions are interesting:

* Passengers will not stand on both sides of an escalator simply because
they are asked to.

I think Londoners should take justifiable pride in not doing what they
are told; I suspect those in say Germany or Japan would be much more
likely to obey the instructions of officials.

* When passengers do stand on both sides capacity is high but this is
only because the majority of passengers do not treat the left hand side
as a standing side

(From the text it is clear that this is because a few people comply with
the TfL instructions and refuse to walk, so others bunch up behind them,
thus occupying almost every step, whereas normally on a standing side
there is at most one person per two steps).

Their final conclusion is that:

* To impose such a selective policy would be even more difficult than
persuading passengers to stand on all escalators and the benefit gained
would be minimal.

I don't know whether TfL management have read this working paper, but if
so their policy at Holborn does seem to be rather contrary to scientific
advice.


--
Clive Page