<div dir="ltr">@ksmith<div><br></div><div>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.</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 4:32 PM, Kevin Smith <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ksmith@wikimedia.org" target="_blank">ksmith@wikimedia.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div>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. <br><br></div>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. <br><br></div>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. <br><br></div>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. <br><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div><br></div></font></span></div><div class="gmail_extra"><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br clear="all"><div><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><span><font color="#888888"><br>Kevin Smith<br>Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation<br></font></span><font><font><i><font color="#888888"><br></font></i></font></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></font></span><div><div class="h5">
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 3:34 PM, Katie Horn <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:khorn@wikimedia.org" target="_blank">khorn@wikimedia.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div>Thanks for the link! Interesting stuff,<br><br>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:<br><a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/view/412632/first-rule-of-ant-traffic-no-overtaking/" target="_blank">http://www.technologyreview.com/view/412632/first-rule-of-ant-traffic-no-overtaking/</a><br></div></div><div><br></div><div>-Katie</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div>On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 11:59 AM, Grace Gellerman <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ggellerman@wikimedia.org" target="_blank">ggellerman@wikimedia.org</a>></span> wrote:<br></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div><div dir="ltr"><div>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. </div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>TL;DR : not unlike the work that we do in developing software.</div><div><br></div><div><div><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/16/the-tube-at-a-standstill-why-tfl-stopped-people-walking-up-the-escalators" rel="noreferrer" style="display:inline!important" target="_blank">http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/16/the-tube-at-a-standstill-why-tfl-stopped-people-walking-up-the-escalators</a><br></div></div></div>
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