It's amazing how differently people navigate public staircases from one city to the next. I first noticed it in Washington DC. I was visiting my sister, who managed with ease to navigate the eerily clean and labyrinthine public train system. The DC system is called The Metro -- a name that implies an urban population that resides actually in the underground; this is impossible as eating is so forbidden within the system that any resident would starve or be evicted five seconds into breakfast. The stations involve escalators that seem to stretch from Purgatory to Hades, with a grade dramatic enough to cause vertigo. They are exactly wide enough for two people to stand comfortably next to each other, another forbidden act. My sister had to constantly remind me to stand behind her, to the right, so I wouldn't be shoved down multiple stories of escalator by grocery-wielding folks intent on barreling down the left side under the power of their own muscles. More than once an elbow of mine strayed over the imaginary mid-line to be instantly bashed by a sea of passing elbows. More than once my sister's attention lapsed and I was only warned back into place by an unfathomably irritated "EXCUSE ME" from half a story up. I wasn't trying to be rude, I'm just not used to people acting so civilized in public.
I used to be. In fact, when I lived in Salt Lake, the public trains (Traxx, a name that is not stupid only as part of the portmanteau describing a collision with a train: Traxxident) were so new that everyone was still deciding how to deal with the matter of sometimes needing to pass others on public stairs. Add to this the fact that the citizenry is compulsively polite, and two people might spend whole hours poised at opposite ends of a staircase, absolutely insisting on stepping aside to let each other by.
None of this cordiality exists in the New York train system (The Subway, of course, a moniker that clearly defines both location and purpose). First of all, unlike DC, we don't have escalators. Okay, there are a few, but those that exist are barely wide enough for one, and the passengers riding up and down them sort of lounge wherever they feel like, apparently recovering from the break-neck walk there and preparing for the manic run that will start once they disembark. It's the only place in Manhattan where people relax when they could be rushing. Perhaps that's part of why there are so few escalators: city planners might have worried that building more would decrease the city's productivity.
Instead of escalators, we have gigantic staircases. They are divided into two sides, and wide enough that a group of four could walk arm in arm up the right side and never risk touching another group of four descending on the left. But alas, this is never possible because New Yorkers seem pathologically committed to weaving back and forth across public spaces, apparently hoping to bash into as many people as possible (except on rainy days when the goal is to gouge out record numbers of eyeballs with one's over-sized umbrella). I used to think that clutching the right side handrail on the right half of the staircase would put me in the best position to conquer the stairs unmolested. I was wrong; in fact, it is the best way to run head-on into a New Yorker who decided that weaving up the wrong side of a crowded staircase was not challenging enough without the added feat of drafting a text message that cannot be sent until reaching ground level after exiting the system: OMG! I just bashed in2 17 ppl -- nope, 18! It's a record LOL.
