Escalator Paralysis

My undercover work began at 6:18 PM, Saturday, July 4th , 2008, at the IMM shopping mall. I was disguised as a pot-bellied, past-middle-age, and overpaid ang moh with nothing better to do (disguised, I tell you), and therefore blended in seamlessly with the unsuspecting locals. My mission? To analyze the behaviour of shoppers using that miracle of modern technology, the travelator -- a contraption more typically seen in airports, essentially a conveyor belt for human beings and their baggage (the difference between the two not always apparent).

IMM’s five stories are connected by four sets of travelators. On previous visits, it struck me that these conveyances provided the most extreme example of a phenomenon I have observed in public places throughout Singapore: Escalator Paralysis (EP). Time and again I have witnessed seemingly healthy individuals rendered immobile the moment their feet come into contact with the escalator stairs. When this happens to a couple who step onto the escalator side by side, not only are they themselves riveted in place, but they block the passage of those lucky few who have retained the use of their legs.

For two reasons, I suspected the full devastation of EP was most starkly revealed at IMM. First, the travelator is very gently inclined and involves no stairs. Second, it takes forever -- OK, it takes 59 seconds, which is damn close to forever -- next time you’re at work, just try standing on your desk and looking straight ahead without moving or talking for 59 seconds -- yes, forever to get from one floor to another. For both reasons, I was sure that only paralysis could force someone to fritter away precious moments of life on this mechanical tortoise.

And so there I was on a Saturday night, surreptitiously collecting data to pass on to the Ministry of Health (MOH). Positioning myself on the second floor, I observed just over 200 people as they came down the descending travelator. I then did the same for the ascending one. For both groups, I scored the number who remained stationary versus those who walked. I did not count people with shopping carts, strollers, or babes-in-arms, nor those who were hopelessly impeded by the corpses ahead of them.

The results? For the “up” travelator, 96% didn’t budge once they set foot on the paralyzing black belt. Now, if shoppers had the full use of their limbs, this number would decrease for the “down” ramp, right? After all, gravity does most of the work. Nope. Same number: 96%. I note that this scourge is race-, age- and sex-independent. People from all, um, walks of life were well-represented by both climbers and comatose. In fact, among the sprightliest were an auntie and uncle well into their 70s, and some kids who figured out how to stay in one spot by walking up the down ramp. (It did look like fun.)

By contrast, the most striking paraplegic was a young man in his early twenties who strolled smoothly onto the belt and then, without a soul in front or behind, calmly endured his 59 seconds of solitude without twitching a muscle.

With my observations duly recorded, I girded my loins and set out to test my ability to march up a travelator peppered with inert beings. I did well for the first five excuse-me’s, simply earning looks that oscillated between shock and sneering contempt. However, two thirds of the way up, I was confronted by a couple and their shopping trolley. The man and trolley occupied two thirds of the passage. There would have been room for me to squeeze past on the left, but there the woman was securely wedged. I’m sure they dearly wished to leave room for the blessedly mobile, but were prevented by EP.

Now keep in mind that some people use the travelator to float past all five floors of IMM. Including transit time between ramps, we are talking about the better part of 5 minutes in which shoppers are idle and defenseless. This is a wasted opportunity whose advantages have been lost on Singapore’s merchants.

Here’s a sampling of the retail bonanza to be reaped by marketing on travelators and escalators: (1) Sushi, except in this case the plates would stay still, and the people would move past them. (2) Haircuts, manicures and shoe-shines. (3) Special extra-slow travelators for fine dining, something like the gastronomic experience on the cable car between Sentosa and Harbour Front.

But there are more sobering concerns. I am particularly worried about a wide-scale and simultaneous break down of escalators and travelator acrosss the island during peak shopping hours. Imagine the trapped thousands requiring air-drops of food, water, medicine and blankets, and the erection of precariously balanced portable toilets.

There is an ironic counterpoint to EP. Although my research shows that most people are prisoners of travelators and escalators (with one exception -- the morning sprint at the MRT station, high-heels no impediment), one hears nary a word of complaint from the afflicted. By contrast, most of us rant bitterly about wait times at taxi stands. It follows that many of those who protest about waiting for cabs are curiously complacent about the hours lost drifting between the floors of our shopping malls. This is a particularly perverse symptom of EP, and one I intend to raise with MOH. Just as soon as I can get out of IMM.

The writer, a Canadian and Professor at the School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, was last heard to be stuck in an elevator.