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                    "If you\u2019ve ridden an escalator in Hong Kong or Singapore, the climb out of an LA Metro station can feel painfully slow. It\u2019s really not just Metro though, American transit escalators generally operate under a much lower speed limit than those in much of the world.Why? Well honestly we don\u2019t have the whole answer, but we did look at the rules governing escalators in 139 cities across 58 countries and came to some interesting conclusions. One of them is that LA Metro\u2019s specified speed is below the maximum allowed in every single city on our list.That doesn\u2019t mean we measured 139 cities\u2019 escalators. We compared their legal limits, which tell us how fast they\u2019re allowed to go, and then looked separately at operating speeds where we could find them.Escalator operating speeds, 42 cities0.75 and up0.65About 0.5Slower than LALA MetroLos AngelesSource: Basin Data. The speed each system's escalators typically run at, in meters a second, from operator documents, a national registry, engineering papers and operators quoted in the press, each checked against its source. LA Metro's dot is the 90 feet a minute its design specifications call for.Hong Kong has some of the fastest escalators in the world, with most MTR station escalators moving people around at 0.75 meters per second, about 148 feet a minute. Next to LA\u2019s specified 90 feet a minute, that\u2019s about a 64% faster pace.How fast the escalators run0.425 citiesBusanDaeguDaejeonGwangjuIncheon0.462 citiesLos AngelesNew York0.511 citiesBerlinBuenos AiresHamburgMunichPhiladelphiaSan FranciscoSeoulTaipeiTokyoWarsawWashington0.6516 citiesDubaiGuangzhouHangzhouHelsinkiMadridNanjingParisPragueSao PauloShanghaiShenzhenStockholmSydneyViennaWuhanXi'an0.757 citiesHong KongKharkivLondonMinskMoscowSaint PetersburgSingapore0.91 cityKyivSource: Basin Data. Typical operating speed in meters a second; 0.46 is LA Metro's specified 90 feet a minute and 0.5 is about 100.For a climb the height of Civic Center/Grand Park\u2019s platform-to-street ascent, that specified speed works out to about 87 seconds standing on an escalator in LA. A trip of the same length at Hong Kong\u2019s usual speed would take about 53.Civic Center\u2019s Escalator Climb after 53 secondsSTREETPLATFORM65 ftHong Kong, 148 ft/minat the streetMetro 1984, 120 ft/min12 s to goUS limit, 100 ft/min25 s to goLA Metro, 90 ft/min34 s to goSource: Metro's 1983 station drawing for Civic Center/Grand Park, street to platform about 65 feet, drawn to scale as one 30-degree escalator. Riders standing still, with LA Metro at its specified 90 feet a minute.So if we could suddenly make LA\u2019s escalators that fast, how much time would people actually get back?Central station on Hong Kong\u2019s MTR. Photo: MiGAIS MinFengau, CC0 via Wikimedia CommonsMetro counts 115 stations and says it has 171 station escalators, but for this calculation we focused on the 27 underground stations. Using FY2026 station ridership figures circulated from a public-records response, we arrive at about 300,000 minutes of escalator riding on an average weekday, or about 1.7 million hours a year.Modeled weekday escalator minutesUnion StationCivic Center7th St/Metro CenterNorth Hollywood10,00050,000 minutesSource: LA Metro FY2026 average weekday boardings (public-records response); Basin model. The 27 underground stations, every rider taking the escalator in and out, standing, at Civic Center's depth and Metro's specified 90 feet a minute. Union Station also counts riders on its street-level platforms, and changes between lines inflate 7th St/Metro Center.There are some pretty big assumptions here. We treated every underground station as roughly as deep as Civic Center, ran every escalator at Metro\u2019s specified 90 feet a minute and assumed everyone takes the escalator, standing still, both in and out. People obviously also walk, take the stairs or use elevators. Transfers complicate the ridership figures, and we left elevated stations out entirely, so this is a rough model rather than an actual count of everyone\u2019s time.But under those assumptions, matching Hong Kong\u2019s usual speed would save about 119,000 minutes every weekday, or about 670,000 hours a year. For someone commuting between two underground stations every workday, the modeled saving is about 9.5 hours annually.The problem is we can\u2019t just turn them up.Escalator operators choose their speeds within limits set by safety codes. Most of the cities we examined follow one of two main standards, or a national version of them. The European standard allows 0.75 meters per second at inclines up to 30 degrees. The American standard caps escalators at 100 feet a minute, about 0.508 meters per second. California uses that 100-foot limit for new installations and speed alterations.Metro\u2019s specified 90 is another 10% below that. LAX, meanwhile, specifies the full 100 feet a minute, so even within Los Angeles we have an airport escalator specification that\u2019s 11% faster than the subway\u2019s.Getting Metro to that American maximum would save 10% of the riding time in our model, about 30,000 minutes each weekday.What would it cost? We don\u2019t have a reliable price for making that change across Metro\u2019s system. Matching Hong Kong would be a bigger project still, involving both the code limit and whether the equipment could accommodate the higher speed.And faster isn\u2019t automatically better for every rider. Singapore\u2019s transit engineers measured nearly twice as much step vibration at 0.75 meters per second as at 0.5. Their escalators use the faster setting during rush hour and the slower one off-peak.Bras Basah station, Singapore. Photo: Katmorro, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia CommonsSpeed also has very real safety stakes, and that\u2019s where our next dive into escalators is headed.Still, the strangest thing we found was in LA\u2019s own archives.The original subway design rules required escalators capable of running at both 90 and 120 feet a minute. At 120, that Civic Center climb would take about 66 seconds instead of 87.Metro's escalator rule19842015Source: SCRTD Metro Rail System Design Criteria and Standards, Vol. III, sec. 23.6.1.C, Revision 2, 1984; Metro Rail Design Criteria, sec. 6.14.6, Revision 9, 2015.We don\u2019t know whether the installed escalators ever actually ran at 120, or when and why that requirement disappeared. The American code lowered its maximum from 125 to 100 in 2000, but we haven\u2019t established a connection between that change and Metro\u2019s decision.What we do know is that LA\u2019s original subway planners required a faster option. Somewhere between those plans and the later rulebook, we lost it.CORRECTION, 2026-09-24. An earlier version said LA Metro\u2019s escalators go 90 feet per minute. That\u2019s the speed Metro\u2019s design specifications call for, and the piece now says so. A reader measured two of Metro\u2019s newer Schindler escalators at 98.4 feet per minute, just under the American maximum, so at least some of the system runs faster than its own specification. We\u2019re asking Metro how its escalators are set.\n  Keep readingPlacesDowntown LA is 1% of the land and 16% of LA\u2019s jobsPlacesInternational traffic at LAX has nearly recovered. The real shortfall is domesticPlacesHalf the restaurants in Los Angeles sit in 20 of its 114 neighborhoods"
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