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Woman Dies Riding WTC Oculus Escalator, News Blames Design. This is Nonsense

I hate the design, but it's not the problem here

By Rain Noe - February 13, 2017

in Architecture

At 5:30am on Saturday, two twentysomething twin sisters were riding an escalator in the World Trade Center Oculus. One of the sisters fell over the side, plunging three stories to the marble floor below. She died of "blunt-impact injuries to her head and torso."

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Her surviving twin, who understandably is currently being treated for trauma, told police that her own hat had fallen off and her sister leaned over the railing to try to catch it, but leaned too far and fell over the side.

The TV news report I saw then had a reporter quoting a bystander as saying "In my opinion, I think that they need to build the walls a little higher when they build these escalators…. The walls are not high enough to prevent tragic accidents like what happened today."

However, when investigators reviewed video of the incident, they found something different than what the surviving twin had described. What they saw was that one of the sisters was "laying prone on the banister of the escalator, like she was pretending to be flying" and "mimicking a superhero before she lost her balance."

Those quotes are taken from NYC's Daily News which then goes on to state that following the woman's death "attention began to shift to the design of escalators at the $4.4 billion facility." They quote an unnamed transit supervisor as saying "They should definitely make [the escalator sides] higher, but with a place to hold on with your arms."

Folks, this is complete nonsense. The reporter even measures the sides of the escalator and gets a height dimension of 40 inches. I just checked the "Public Spaces" chapter of the Human Dimension and Interior Space book of standards, and while escalator railing height is not addressed, handrail height is pegged at 30 to 34 inches.

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Let me say that as a lifelong New Yorker I absolutely hate the design of the Oculus. To me it is the work of a starchitect imposing his ego on average citizens to the tune of 4 billion dollars. The building has nothing to do with 9/11, nor does it pay any fealty to Minoru Yamasaki's original World Trade Center design nor does it serve as a fitting monument, in my opinion, to the people who lost their lives there and the first responders who continue to suffer lingering health effects. And I feel I can criticize Calatrava for these things, subjective though they may be.

However, to criticize the designer for escalator railing heights that are perfectly adequate, but have been misused by someone in a way that's grossly negligent of their own personal safety, is completely idiotic.

I feel bad for the family of the woman who died, and I've not mentioned any names here out of respect for them. I've seen what I believe are valid instances of poor design leading to people's deaths, here and here. But I don't think this is one of them.

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Joshua Terrell

7 years ago

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If you can't design out the possibility of misuse, should you avoid designing it at all? I have no answer.

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- Deca Poda
  
  Joshua Terrell
  
  7 years ago
  
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  Possibilities of riders doing a spinning superhero on the escalator would have not strucked the designer / inventor of the escalator during the design phase. Companies should evolve them self with the user behavior, even if this is illegal. There must be a fail safe for this kind of event now. That's what probably is the evolution of design.
  
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Dan Lewis

7 years ago

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Rain, I agree you. That said, Human Dimension and Interior Space isn't building code. The International Building Code (at least 2009 version) specifies gardrail height to be 42". The NYC building may specify something different, I haven't looked for years. I'm not sure if the handrail on an escalator is also a gardrail - probably is. The 40" the reporter measured may be more depending on where the measurement was take and what the actual height requirement is. People behaving stupidly get what they get.

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Andrew Bates

7 years ago

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If you invent the train, you invent the train crash. We as designers and planners cannot remove the danger of misuse. At best we can make it a little safer, but someone always blames the tool rather than the user.

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Nathan Guice

7 years ago

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This is a constant problem in Playground Equipment design. We can take every possible measure, we can meet every guideline, but someone will always make extra effort to misuse it. In our world, kids see every safety measure as an additional challenge they must over come.
There's only so much you can do to prevent accidental injury or death, the rest is on them.

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Lloyd Alter

7 years ago

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Bravo Rain for point this out. In Toronto where I live, they built really big escalators in the Sheraton Hotel and a couple of people died, doing stupid things after getting drunk. They installed really big ugly stainless steel tube cow catchers that ended the incidents, but the Oculus is not party central, this should not be necessary.

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