[teampractices] Interesting logistical experiment in London Underground

[Grace Gellerman]

@ksmith

I think that the other lesson here is to consider context before applying
rules.  The pass-on-the-left rule makes sense on most, if not all BART
escalators, but not so much in Holborn Underground station.

On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 4:32 PM, Kevin Smith <ksmith at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> The underground experiment is interesting, but it's critical to understand
> the context. They targeted escalators that are so steep and long that
> people were choosing not to walk up them. Thus, there would be many unused
> half-steps on the walking side, which is clearly wasteful.
>
> At every BART station I have been on, the walking side is as crowded as
> the standing side. Changing the walking side to a second standing side
> would clearly reduce overall throughput, AND frustrate people in a hurry.
> That's a lose-lose proposition.
>
> The other plausible argument in favor of having everyone stand instead of
> walk would be safety, but the experimenters didn't seem very interested in
> that.
>
> Tying it back to software development, I guess I would take away this
> lesson: Look for, and eliminate, waste. It's hard to go wrong doing that.
>
>
>
> Kevin Smith
> Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 3:34 PM, Katie Horn <khorn at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the link! Interesting stuff,
>>
>> Aside from being another example of counterintuitive realities about
>> bottlenecks in complicated systems, I don't really know how this helps or
>> adds to the conversation other than being pretty neat, but I recently heard
>> this was also a thing:
>>
>> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/412632/first-rule-of-ant-traffic-no-overtaking/
>>
>> -Katie
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 11:59 AM, Grace Gellerman <
>> ggellerman at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>>> An experiment in the London Underground yielded a similarly
>>> counterintuitive result to the Kanban tenet that we finish more by working
>>> on less at any given time.
>>>
>>> The Transport for London was able to substantially increase throughput
>>> of passengers exiting the subway by converting the walking lane on the left
>>> of the escalators to an additional standing lane like the traditional one
>>> on the right.
>>>
>>> The experiment sought to change entrenched behavior as it tried to
>>> tackle bottlenecks.  Given that the capacity of these subway stations will
>>> be challenged to process larger populations as technology improves (more
>>> frequent trains, larger doors), finding a solution in behavior could be
>>> more attractive than addressing one through infrastructure.
>>>
>>> TL;DR : not unlike the work that we do in developing software.
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/16/the-tube-at-a-standstill-why-tfl-stopped-people-walking-up-the-escalators
>>>
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>>
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