More than 90% of people know about the appeal to stand still on escalators, yet about 30% say they walk when one side is left clear, according to an Asahi Shimbun survey. East Japan Railway has been calling for standing passengers since 2005, more than 20 years, and people still walk.
Tokyo is now looking at the machines rather than the people. The metropolitan government is examining the actual circumstances of escalator accidents and plans to begin experiments on safe use, including slowing escalators down, withnews by the Asahi Shimbun reported.
Walkers argue there is no harm in it. "When there is no one around, or when there is no risk of contact or falling, isn't it fine to walk?" they say. JR East's answer was unambiguous. "Regardless of the surrounding situation, we ask all customers to stand still without walking and to hold the handrail," the company said.
Campaigns, then people standing in the way
JR East began a safe-use campaign in 2009 as accidents continued. From 2010 it spread to operators and local governments nationwide that endorsed it, with in-station announcements and multilingual posters asking riders to stand still without walking.
Keio Electric Railway tried something harder at Shinjuku Station, one of the busiest in Tokyo. From fiscal 2021 it asked passengers at the station's Shinsen-guchi entrance to stand still and ride in two columns while escalator construction was under way. A single standing line would have overflowed the narrow concourse, the company judged.
Guides and recorded announcements did little at first. So Keio put patrolling staff on the escalators in work clothes and helmets, wearing signs around their necks that called for two-column use, standing in the open right-hand column and asking people to stop. Walkers stopped. "When the patrol staff were not there, we saw little effect," a Keio official said. The measure belonged to the construction work and has not been used since.
The pattern is the same in both cases: people change what they do when something stands in their way, not when they are asked. The survey suggests the appeal is widely known and still widely ignored.