The hidden benefits of smart motorways

In 2015, Holborn Underground station was suffering from serious overcrowding at peak hours, with a bottleneck forming in the space leading to the escalators. So Transport for London tried an experiment. Abandoning the usual ‘stand on the right, walk on the left’ convention, they placed signs on two of the three ascending escalators instructing people on both sides to stand.

Outrage followed. But the experiment worked. Escalators with passengers standing transported an average of 151 people per minute, compared with 115 for the dual-use escalator.

You can see why people objected: it is counterintuitive to the point of seeming daft. If you walk you spend less time on the escalator and get to the top quicker, right? So if more people walk, surely crowds are reduced? Yet, like a modern-day Aesop, here was Transport for London suggesting that more haste meant less speed.