Democratic Escalators

The escalators in Munich’s U-Bahn are bidirectional. Not one up, one down: just one, and it goes whichever way the first person to step on it wants to go. If someone’s riding down and you want to go up, you wait. There’s no override, no priority lane. You just stand there until it’s your turn. I’ve started calling them democratic escalators. It’s a small thing. But after years in Japan and London and now Munich, these moments of enforced patience have started to feel like how a country tells you what it values, in the language of everyday objects. Years ago, I wrote a series of posts about everyday usability in Japan. Ticket gates that stay open by default, trusting you’ve paid. Queues that form in perfect silence at painted marks on a platform. Convenience stores that silently profile your age and gender at the till to optimise tomorrow’s inventory. Japan is extraordinarily well-designed for daily life, but the order comes from somewhere different. It’s observational. You watch, you…