One of my regular correspondents, David Crawford, passed on this post on the torontoist blog about the disappearing escalator signs.
David comments:
For a group of people who can’t find time to put up clear and current signage (lots of examples on your site) I find it amazing they can find time and man-power to remove signs that seem, to me anyway, as being very useful. They have them in London where the escalators are very orderly, they do not have them in Montreal, where it’s chaotic – draw your own conclusions!)
From my point of view, the most walking that happens on escalators is at times when they are not running at all. This has not been as bad of late as the months I documented earlier in 2006, but it still happens far too often.
As for claims that an escalator cannot be restarted without an extensive technical check, here’s a counter example. A few days ago, at Broadview Station, the oft-stopped escalator was restarted by someone who just arrived on the scene, inserted a key to start it, and then wandered off again. So much for a complex inspection, just another of those wonderful TTC excuses for not providing good service.