COLLEGE
PARK, Md., July 29, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Anyone who
has been to a busy subway station during peak congestion – say, the
morning rush hour or funneling out of an arena after a concert or
sporting event – is all too familiar with the bottlenecks created
by people jockeying to get onto escalators. So, what's the most
efficient way to get people moving? Michael
C. Fu at the University of
Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business ran
an analysis to find out.
Fu, Smith Chair of Management Science and professor for UMD's
Institute for Systems Research, looked at whether the often-implied
two-lane escalator etiquette of "walk left, stand right," is truly
the best way to deal with jammed people-movers.
Prior research has suggested that during high-congestion
periods, it would be more efficient if everyone just stood in both
lanes, but Fu was skeptical of this counterintuitive
conclusion.
"In practice, such a policy is enormously difficult to
implement," says Fu. "It's really hard to get people to change
their behaviors, and many people think they should have the right
to walk on an escalator."
That conclusion's main assumption is that the proportion of
standers is overwhelmingly higher than walkers, which is not always
the case, he says. The number of walkers could exceed the number of
standers in some stations, particularly those with relatively short
escalators.
He used deterministic queueing models that considered both
system and individual objectives to analyze various scenarios of
walkers and standers in making the most efficient use of escalators
(or moving walkways).
Fu's analysis concludes that the best way to clear a busy
platform during rush hour is to allow everyone to access both lanes
of an escalator, regardless of their desire to walk or stand. It's
the well-known operations management theory that forming a pooled
queue is more efficient than using dedicated queues.
"The key is to allow jockeying and load balancing to enable a
pooling effect to clear the platform, and then sort out the walkers
and standers over the course of the escalator," says Fu.
This would help improve efficiency, although there could be
negative effects on safety, since it would require more movement on
the escalator itself, he says.
"An alternative solution would be to allow the wannabe walkers
to quickly get to the head of the left lane and then after they are
(mostly) cleared, convert the escalators to standing only."
He says transit systems could use a signaling system to indicate
lanes in use for walkers and standers that could change based on
rush hour capacities – like the signals used on many roads and
bridges that change direction based on rush hours. The signals
could work on a fixed time schedule or switch based on sensors,
says Fu.
"If this policy were known to all the users of the system, it
could also affect behavior and increase efficiency, as knowing that
they would be at the head of the queue might incentivize some
standers to convert to walkers."
Read Fu's research, "Escalator Etiquette: Stand or
Walk? A Systems Analysis," in the journal Systems.
About the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of
Business
The Robert H. Smith School of Business is an internationally
recognized leader in management education and research. One of 12
colleges and schools at the University of Maryland, College
Park, the Smith School offers undergraduate, full-time and
flex MBA, executive MBA, online MBA, business master's, PhD and
executive education programs, as well as outreach services to the
corporate community. The school offers its degree, custom and
certification programs in learning locations in North
America and Asia.
Contact Greg Muraski, gmuraski@umd.edu
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SOURCE University of Maryland's
Robert H. Smith School of Business