I KNEW there was something suspicious about that escalator.....

[marmar]

[bluesbassman]

1. Alas, all those years at Juilliard wasted.

"I could'a been an actor, but I wound up here".

[pokerfan]

2. Safer that way

[Chan790]

4. DC Metro shuts off the escalators during high-attendance events for that reason.

I remember how many people here on DU were pissed that the escalators were off before and after Obama's inauguration. There's an etiquette to escalators in DC, one that tourists are not always mindful or aware of. Even on auspicious days, it's a working city. All those places that tourists like to go see: Library of Congress, US Capitol, White House, Congressional Office Buildings, Smithsonian, Supreme Court; not so much the monuments...those are places of employment, we're trying to work.

Stand on the right, people passing on the left. The locals will shove you if you're in the way because you're supposed to stand on the right. We're not on vacation, the fact that the POTUS is changing actually means more work for most people in the federal government, everything's more crazy...and tourists are clogging up the escalators and causing people to miss trains, be late to work, etc. Fights and assaults break out. Metro Police had learned the lesson long before then.

Turn off the escalators and people automatically use them like stairs without much thought in a rather orderly and efficient manner.

[marmar]

5. Yep. People really need to be more mindful of the stand right, walk left rule....

...... I've seen more than a few hapless tourists knocked over, especially in London.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

6. Wouldn't London be "stand left, walk right"?

.. given that most people there drive on the wrong side of the road?

.. and they make their cars so the passenger gets the steering wheel, not the driver.

[marmar]

7. They walk the right way......but the driving is all bollocksed up.

nt

[geardaddy]

8. In the London Tube they have a sign

to stand right and walk left.

[Art_from_Ark]

11. In Japan, it's stand on the left, walk on the right

[geardaddy]

12. When I first went to the UK I thought it would be that way too.

Since they drive on the left, but it's not.

[hifiguy]

10. And then there are the cretins who get off an escalator and

STOP. Where the hell do they think that the people behind them are supposed to go??

[geardaddy]

13. Oh man. That is a HUGE pet peeve for me.

[pokerfan]

9. I forget where it was

but in a large, busy airport I was riding a crowded escalator when someone ahead of me stepped off with a stroller and decided that the mouth of the escalator would be a terrific place to rearrange her stroller, bags and stuff. Well, long story short, top of an escalator is not a good place to stop and hijinks occurred. Many years later, this cartoon reminded me of the event.



(Panel 7 has become my standard answer to that question.)

[pinboy3niner]

3. Hmph! THIS...

...is acting Astaires...