Now there’s no excuse for not standing on the left of the escalators going into Parliament Station

Now there’s no excuse for not standing on the left of the escalators going into Parliament Station. Surely nobody could miss this new signage.

New escalator signage, Parliament Station

Mind you, “exit promptly” doesn’t really apply when you’re on your way in.

But full marks to Metro for addressing this problem here… now if they can get prominent signage into the rest of their stations that have escalators… and get the escalators running at faster-than-snail’s-pace speeds outside peak hours, too.

(Tipoff: bok_)


14 Replies to “Now there’s no excuse for not standing on the left of the escalators going into Parliament Station”

  1. hahaha! thats awesome!!

    Great to see Metro is doing that! Now its another thing if people will actually follow the suggestions.

  2. Why does it say keep left, but all the arrows on the sign are pointing right? Maybe stand in the middle to cover all bases…

  3. Will be more effective with a month long staff campaign warning commuters doing the wrong thing. Signs can be ignored.

  4. Even better than full-speed escalators all day would be to add functionality to detect when someone enters an escalator. Then they could stop and start automatically, like they do in many metro systems in Europe; it saves power, and still lets them run fast all day long.

  5. It’s only partly about saving power. Maintenance and run time to next service are important factors to consider. like taking a car to service after 10000 km, running a escalator at full speed will make maintenance more frequent and with costs passed on to who?

  6. Wasn’t there a study a few years back by a university that detected over ten diferent sources of semen on the escalators at one of the city loop stations?

    I purposefully avoid escalator hand rails.

  7. On the information for the loop ‘achievements’ :

    The documents says: “Variable speed escalators are also equipped with ‘speedray’ devices to allow operation at 10% when empty, accelerating to full speed at the approach of a passenger, so conserving energy and reducing maintenance”.

    I wonder if its still functioning?

  8. I must agree that it is odd having right pointing arrows on a sign with instructions to keep left.
    And also, I missed this sign as I was exiting the station/going up the escalator. Maybe they need some more ‘in your face’ signs in the other direction. Do we really need the pictures of Parliament House?

  9. Southern Cross has variable speed escalators, as does North Melbourne. Walking at them from the wrong direction is somewhat amusing, when you get thrown backwards at an increasing speed.

  10. I read the arrows as ‘steps’ similar to bullet points eg step 1, then step 2 etc… It would seem odd to equate the direction of the process flow arrows to a standing direction on the escalator. English language generally dictates that we read from left to right. This sign seems to follow that format well.

  11. Variable speed escalators at Southern Cross – where? I catch the train from platform 12 daily and have never noticed any change in speed other than being generally slow. I got off at Flagstaff the other day in peak and the escalators there moved so fast I thought I was on a roller coaster ride!

  12. Daniel, I always assumed the exit promptly sign at melb central (and as shown above at parliament) referred more specifically to exiting the escalator i.e not lingering near the ends of the escalator as opposed to exiting the station itself…

  13. Er, I went in and out of Parliament station yesterday and managed to miss these signs. I wasn’t even in a hurry. I just stood there patiently for the entire (interminable) escalator journey.
    DavidW (of melb.general)

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