Nagoya Stop and Stand Corps is looking to change escalator etiquette.

Just standing around doing nothing at work is often a good way o get yourself fired, but in one city in Japan, it’s gainful employment.

Decades ago, Japanese society came to an unspoken agreement about escalator etiquette. In Tokyo and east Japan, if an escalator is wide enough, you’re supposed to stand on the left, and walk on the right. In Osaka and west Japan the sides are flipped, but the idea is the same: if there’s sufficient space, people who don’t want to walk on the escalator should leave half of it unblocked for those who do.

In recent years, though, certain facilities and municipalities have become concerned that walking on escalators is unsafe, and have requested that people stand on both sides of the escalators and no one walk. The city of Nagoya has even passed a municipal ordinance to that effect. However, since walking on an escalator takes only roughly the same amount of agility as walking up or down a flight of stairs, not everyone is convinced that it’s really such a safety risk, and some people continue to walk on the right side of Nagoya escalators when the path is clear.

So to take away that option, the Nagoya government has created the Nagoya Stand and Stop Corps. What do they do? They take position at an escalator, and then, well, they stand and stop, as shown in the video here.

Working in teams of three people per site, the Stand and Stop Corps stand on the right side of an escalator, wearing an oversized hand with finger extended on their back accompanied by the phrase “Nagoyaka ni STOP shite ne,” meaning “Please stop tranquilly” and incorporating a little wordplay between “nagoyaka ni” (tranquilly) and “Nagoya.” In doing so, they block the side that otherwise people would be able to walk on, enforcing, in a roundabout way, the city ordinance.

The Stand and Stop Corps ride escalators for six hours per deployment, with the team leader earning 16,000 yen (US$110) for the day, a much better hourly rate than most retail or restaurant part-time jobs. The team’s other two members make 6,500 yen per shift, which still isn’t half-bad considering that the only required skill is “ability to stand.”

The Stand and Stop Corps are dispatched four or five times a month, and during 2024 operated at 19 different train stations inside Nagoya. With the city government saying they’ve observed a corresponding increase in the number of people standing on both sides of escalators, the Corps is continuing its activities this year.

Along with being safer, proponents of standing on both sides of the escalator say that research shows it allows the entire group of people using the escalators to get to the other end more quickly than by leaving one side open for walkers. However, the counterargument to that is that for individual escalator users who would have otherwise walked, taking away that option means it takes longer for them to arrive at the other end that it otherwise would have. Others feel that walking isn’t really the problem when elevator accidents occur, and that the bigger cause of injuries is people running or not watching their step because they’re looking at their phone instead, and that those are the behaviors that should be prohibited instead.

Source: Teleasa News via Yahoo! Japan News via Jin
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