With all the talk about whether our trains will ever rival Europe’s or Asia’s, here are some notable examples of another elegant but understated mode of human transport. For your viewing pleasure, some people-mover porn:
1. Shortest escalator: Okadaya Mores shopping mall in Kawasaki, Japan. Certified by the Guinness Book of Records with a vertical height of only 33 inches.
2. Longest escalator: The Park Pobedy in Moscow. At 413 feet (740 steps), the ride lasts about three minutes.
3. Longest escalator, Western Hemisphere division: Wheaton Station, Maryland on the Washington, DC, Metro. It is 230 feet long.
4. Narrowest escalator: somewhere in Chicago. Not officially the world’s narrowest, but there’s certainly no room for a passing lane.
5. Spiral escalators like this one can be found in Saudi Arabia, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Macau, as well as Las Vegas and San Francisco.
February 26th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
That spiral escalator is kind of amazing
February 26th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
I’m pretty sure that skinny escalator is in the North/Clybourn subway station.
February 27th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Maybe not really an extreme, but I’ve seen a few two way escalators in London’s tube stations. They are relatively short (about a 15′ vertical) and are turned off until someone comes along and trips a sensor which turns the escalator on in the direction of that person’s travel. So if a person approaches at the top, the escalator starts moving in the down direction (and vice versa). The only problem, which I experienced once, is if two people approach the escalator at the same time — one from the top and one from the bottom. Whoever trips the sensor first gets the escalator going in their direction, while the other person is caught off guard when the steps are moving against them.
March 3rd, 2009 at 9:23 am
definitely north & clybourn