LA Metro has some of the slowest escalators on Earth

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).

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.

> [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.

Decades of fecal matters gumming up the gears

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

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.

That's what smartphoness are for ...

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