Even for the subway there are single-file escalators, like the one going down to 34th St Herald Square between 32nd and 33rd St.

Without measurements, I can easily think of two other contenders:

- The Google employee escalator at Pier 57.

- The escalator to leave Delancey-Essex station.

Japan has been pushing for people to stand on both sides of the escalator. My dad thought it was due to unbalanced wear. I assumed single-file escalators were more efficient given that most people stand, they want to discourage walking, and it gets rid of the unbalanced load problem.

Are the narrow escalators retrofits? IE, were there originally stairs that were converted to escalators?

Port Authority is full of them — every single platform, I think.

I don’t know if that’s sarcasm or not, but that’s the norm for shops in the uk (where shops are large enough to warrant escalators)

Ironically some people take a shit on public transit escalators, which is one of the reasons they are often out of service.

https://missionlocal.org/2018/05/whats-with-the-16th-street-...

Assuming you can actually take a shit for free, or otherwise, on every lobby in NY.

Saw a Jimmy Fallon taping there a couple years ago, and echo this sentiment! Highly recommend trying to get into a taping if visiting NYC, one of the cheapest fun (and free!) ways to spend an afternoon.

If the US escalator/elevator market were integrated with the global market, would there be a US escalator/elevator market, or would it have been offshored and the jobs lost?

Standardization is a huge benefit if as here you can actually standardize so that things become interchangeable. e.g. I went out for an impromptu dinner yesterday, two different people had phones which were low, a friend had a power bank, everything speaks USB C so it all just works. I think one of them was an iPhone? I don't remember the brand of power bank, it doesn't matter, everything uses USB C.

It's not useful where "standardization" means either writing a document everybody agrees but nobody actually implements, or, the document just says do any of six things but each vendor chooses differently, or worst of all the document says it's basically dealer's choice so in practice the standard was worthless. In these cases the "standard" is just a thin barrier to entry, no real benefit to consumers since they can't swap supplier.

This often means accepting that maybe the global standard isn't quite ideal for you in some sense, but must be enforced anyway.

https://i.imgur.com/N0oMono.gif (I don't echo Calvin's sentiment, your comment just lined up so nicely with my memory of this comic that I had to share it)

There are still some wooden escalators inside the flagship Macy's store in Herald Square (Manhattan).

I have memories of a similar escalator, probably at or near Downtown Crossing.

I don't remember it being made of wood, but I remember it being narrow and slanted downwards and kind of scary. Come to think of it, the station in general was very run down and a bit frightening to ~5yo me.

This would have been in the early to mid eighties.

There were wooden stairs at the old flagship G. Fox & Co department store in Hartford CT. I don't recall them being slanted, though.

Because the escalator is so narrow, they had to fill the space

10 Rockefeller Plaza was built in 1940 so the escalator could be original.

The London Underground replaced its last wooden escalator only 11 years ago and that was more than 80 years old.

(I should clarify: the treads were wooden but the mechanism was steel.)

I bet it would be outrageously expensive to replace. Escalators aren't cheap to begin with and this one is no doubt built to its own standard so anything you replace it with would have to be heavily customized to fit.

There's a Fat Man's Misery passage in Mammoth Cave. I would imagine there's a lot of places named that.

https://www.nps.gov/places/fat-man-s-misery-beneath-your-fee...

TFA doesn't provide any measurements, so how did you compare them?