Escalator etiquette is the etiquette of using

escalator An escalator is a moving staircase which carries people between floors of a building or structure. It consists of a motor-driven chain of individually linked steps on a track which cycle on a pair of tracks which keep the step tread horizo ...

s. In many places, there is a convention that people should stand on a particular side to allow other people to walk on the other side. Standing on the right is the most common convention, following early escalator design in London. In the 21st century, there have been campaigns for standing on both sides for reasons of safety or to increase capacity.

Left, right or both

The first escalators installed in the

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The ...

at Earl's Court station used the design patented by Charles Seeberger. These did not let the passengers dismount in the direction of travel, as currently. Instead, a diagonal partition shunted them off to one side while the stairs disappeared under the partition. The side chosen for disembarkation was the left hand side and this is the origin of their convention that riders should stand on the right, so that the walking riders would not have to cut into a standing line of people to exit. Other locations, such as

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

and

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...

follow the London convention of standing on the right but, in some places such as

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

and Australia, riders stand on the left and walk on the right. A 2015 experiment by Transport for London suggested that such a convention sometimes reduces the efficiency of escalators: the number of people carried can increase if people stand on both sides. In Japan, where different cities have different conventions, there was a "No Walk" campaign in 2015. This suggested remaining stationary on both sides for safety reasons and also recommended that riders leave an empty step between themselves and the person in front. Other places that have tried to dissuade riders from walking on escalators include

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

and

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...

but these campaigns are usually unsuccessful.

Gallery

File:Leave an open step and stand on the escalator.jpg, Leave an open step File:Crocs escalator safety warning sign.jpg,

Crocs Crocs, Inc. (stylized in all lowercase) is an American footwear company based in Broomfield, Colorado, that manufactures and markets the Crocs brand of foam clogs. History Crocs was founded by Lyndon "Duke" Hanson, and George Boedecker Jr. to ...

in Finsbury File:Značky na eskalátoru z podchodu metra.jpg, Palmovka station in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...

File:Singapore Prohibition-signs-18.jpg,

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

Left, right or both

Gallery

See also

References

Citations

Sources