London Underground Tube Diary – Going Underground’s Blog
Yesterday when coming home, I noticed there was something weird about the people coming up the escalators at Leicester Square (they weren’t dressed as Santas – that’s the best escalator picture I could find for this chilly time of year in London – I was freezing at work yesterday!).
No-one on the up escalator was actually moving. It was as though someone had pressed a pause button on a video. After a few seconds of surprise and looking around at each other, they realised the escalator had just stopped and as there was no sign of it starting again, they had to walk up.
There was no explanation as to why it had stopped and some people may have welcomed the exercise. But I wonder how many of them about to walk onto the suddenly halted escalator had “Escalator Wobble”?
From a post some time ago I reported that scientists at Imperial College with too much time on their hands had done a study on this “They have got to the bottom of “broken escalator wobble”. You know the sensation you get when you step onto an escalator that isn’t working although you think it is and you lose your balance or get a bit dizzy. Apparently it’s the conflict between what the brain knows is going to happen (no movement) and what it thinks is going to happen, based on previous experience (movement). We all speed up when approaching an escalator, so when it isn’t moving we stumble. The Professors at Imperial didn’t test this on escalators though (although I’m sure they had plently of broken ones to choose from), but on sleds in a laboratory.”
AAAAAAAAAHHHH! I am reminded of a most unpleasant experience I had once: a full-blown panic attack on a public-transportation escalator. This was on a trip my husband David and I took to Washington DC some years ago.
The escalator wasn’t running at the Dupont Circle Metro stop, and I had to walk down. I have a depth perception problem that is most noticeable when I’m trying to decide if it’s safe to step onto a moving escalator to go down (up is no problem). Something about the vertical treads moving away and dropping down doesn’t play well with my head and I can’t help but hesitate long enough for people to pile up impatiently behind me. Also, I’m always anxious I’ll step on an edge and not on a full tread, so I have to wait, wait, wait, until the timing is right and I can put my foot down. I can’t depend on my eyes to tell me when it’s safe, I actually have to step on kind of like when you time your entry into a moving jump-rope on the playground. You know: “One and two and three and go.” And it’s almost as bad going down a long set of stairs. Double the discomfort when walking down stationary escalator treads – those stripes become positively “vertigal.”
Dupont is one of the deepest stations and the escalators are very, very long. The elevator wasn’t working (dammit) and I realized that I had no choice but to walk down the escalator. This didn’t seem so bad; I thought it was better than riding a long moving escalator, actually.
I thought wrong.
By the time I was a third of the way down, I perceived the treads as a long, gleaming Ramp of Impending Doom, down which my brain was convinced I was about to slide. So I leaned way, way back to try to see the tread edges better. Just made it worse. Then I totally froze up in fear, with a bunch of exasperated commuters behind me. All I could do for a minute was turn sideways, close my eyes, and motion for people to go around me. David looked like he couldn’t believe his eyes. Meanwhile I was gripping the rubber handrail so hard my fingers started to hurt. Finally, the press of people lessened and I was able to get moving. This time, I tried to look more or less straight ahead and step down “blind.” It didn’t help my wacky perception that all the surfaces in the corners of my eyes were smooth, gleaming stainless steel. That just made it worse.
I was in a flop-sweat panic by the time I got to the station level. It was one of only two panic attacks I’ve ever experienced, and to this day I have to wait until NO ONE is behind me as I step onto a down escalator, because being rushed makes me anxious.
For some reason, this doesn’t bother me as much when I’m wearing contacts – the escalators on the London Tube didn’t faze me, but if I’m wearing glasses and sandals instead of contacts and closed-toe athletic shoes, forget it.