Town Hall Stn (Syd) - Potential catastrophe?

["Greg Cantori" <greg@mpx.com.au>]

Picture this scenario - late September 2000. You-know-what
is in full swing at Homebush and tens of thousands of
eager-beaver tourists are using our CitiRail system. For
some strange reason, many of these visitors are up at the
crack of dawn and sharing the trains with regular city commuters.

One morning, around 08:25, no less than 5 fully crowded trains
arrive at the six Town Hall platforms simultaneously.
Thousands of passengers stream out and head up the stairs and
escalators to the exit level. Among these passengers are a hundred
or so tourists clutching their blue and white Kellogs K-Time tickets.

Suddenly, several unrelated tourists lose their tickets in
the notoriously unreliable gates. Perhaps some tickets were
singles, or perhaps they were invalid - for whatever the reason,
there is now a growing delay for passengers trying to exit, and
the queues of people waiting their turn get longer alarmingly
quickly as buzzers sound and the orange gate lights flash.

Towards the end of the queues, there is no order, just a slow
crushing mass of angry commuters and bewildered tourists. People
coming up the escalators step off at the top and can move no more
than a few metres before coming to a halt. Within the next 30
seconds, a catastrophe will unfold as the escalator passengers
have nowhere to go at the top. Smarter one nearing the top will
notice the sudden bottleneck and hear the cries of people who
are being struck by other people coming up behind them at the rate
of two people every two seconds.  Some of them might be smart
enough to turn the other way and try to stay in one place by
walking down the rising stairs, but this tactic, while theoretically
sound, fails as it requires the immediate attention and cooperation
of every person on the escalator.

With dozens of passengers now being crushed against their fellow
commuters, the only solution is to turn off the escalators!
There ought to be a red button somewhere at the top (and bottom)
of every escalator, but that is precisely the place where it
is most difficult for anyone to move, let alone search for a
small obscure button. And few people would even know they exist.

Eventually, after another 60 seconds, the screams of the passengers
at the exit level alert those still on platforms 4, 5 and 6 to the
problem, and the red buttons *at the bottom* of the escalators
are quickly found and pressed.  Unfortunately, by the time CitiRail
controllers have understood what has happened, and issued signals
to stop further trains from arriving at Town Hall, 14 people have
been crushed to death and another 39 are injured, some seriously.

An inquest into the accident (held 6 months later of course) has
found that there was no monitoring of the queue behavior and there
were no staff members inside the gates at the exit level who could
have been empowered to stop the escalators.

Lawsuits against CitiRail are settled sometime over the next 10 years
and costs awarded (for pain, suffering, permanent disablement, and death
through negligence) exceed $45,000,000.

--------

This *could* happen. Is anything being done to anticipate and
prevent it?


--
Greg Cantori
The Griper
http://australia.ccgnews.com
Poker, Magic, Astronomy, Journalism, Science, Truth
http://www.mpx.com.au/~greg/