Step Aside

Like a lot of people in this town, I'll be hopping on the metro tomorrow morning, making my way to another Monday at the office. It's tourist season in D.C., and that's a good thing. Tourism brings much needed dollars into the city. However, it also causes gritting of teeth and frustrated sighs from D.C. residents on their way to work. The reason? The influx of people on the Metro system who .do not know the unwritten rules of metro escalators.

With record numbers of visitors coming to Washington -- 6 million are expected this summer -- and a growing daily Metro ridership that hovers at 690,000, encounters between visitors and locals play out on the subway each day. It's a cultural as well as physical clash -- tourists from Indiana wandering among impatient Washingtonians rushing to make their trains.

…"There's a protocol," Culp said. "You walk on the left and stand on the right."

But at least we have a sense of humor about it.

A pair of entrepreneurs launched StandtotheRight.com, a Web site that sells $15 T-shirts that make fun of the daily Metro collisions between tourists and locals.

One version is a black-and-white image of an escalator with the words Walk and Stand in the appropriate places. The other is an edgy revenge fantasy of someone rushing down a Metro escalator, pushing bodies out of the way. It says "Welcome to Washington D.C., Now Please Stand to the Right."

It's happened to me more times than I can count. I'm on my way to work, or home. I hear the train coming as I reach the top of the esclalator down to to the platform. I'm rushing down the escalator. I come to a sudden stop because someone is standing on the left. Just standing there, chatting casually with their traveling companion, who is standing next to them on the right. Over their heads, I can just see the train. The doors are open. People are boarding. I start to say "excuse me." Then I hear the tone that signals the doors closing. I watch them slide shut. The train slowly pulls away. And I finally reach the platform. The two travelers in front of me on the escalator walk down the other side of the platform, because they are catching a train in the other direction, which has just glided into the station.

So, let me say now, if you are tourist in D.C., and you're enjoying the Metro system, and you're riding up or down the escalator, please stand to the right. You can enjoy your ride, and the rest of us can get where we're going, and the world will be a happier place. I promise.

And, liberal that I am, it's the one time that I don't mind people moving to the right. Besides, I think it's somehow fitting that—at least on the Metro elscalators—the left side moves forward while the right stands still.

Comments

[Lauren]

I know the frustration- I always thought it was common protocol, in airports, malls, subways, to move to the right while on an escalator, but apparently there are people out there who don't get it.

While in DC I had the hardest time stopping my travelling companion from being one of THOSE PEOPLE. I must have moved her over to the side at least ten times.

[Jeff]

Amen. Seriously, they need to paint a yellow stripe down the middle of the escalators as a passing lane, or something.

[Houston]

I was going to say it's not just tourists, but then I thought about the thousands of wide-eyed visitors passing through the Wash. D.C. metro, and caught myself. For you it is about tourists being clueless. For us in the S.F. Bay area, it's just about people being clueless.