Blog Number 218

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

I received a phone call around noon today.  It was my wife calling to inform me that our daughter lost another tooth.  She lost one last week as well.  She was making sure that I had some $1 bills since the tooth last week caught us off guard and the daughter's tooth turned into $5 (we did not have anything smaller than a 5).  Anyway, I did not have anything smaller than a $10 so it was time to walk over to the bank.  Actually it is a credit union and they have a branch inside the building where I work.  They are renovating their normal location so I had to go down the escalators, through the cafeteria and then back up the escalators in order to get to their temporary location.  There was a small line when I got there (I did not make it over there until about 2 pm) and so I chatted with the lady behind me in line and explained my predicament.  She recalled losing one of her Sacajawea dollars that she was saving when one of her children suddenly lost a tooth.  Another time she had to give up a $2 bill she was saving.  She wished me luck and then I headed back the way I came and made the 2-escalator trip.

While on the escalator I wondered if there were guidelines on how fast the moving stairs can move.  Is there some sort of OSHA guideline on the speed?  Well it turns out that is is not OSHA that sets the standards, it is actually ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) and the code outlining escalators is: ASME A17.1 - Safety Code for Elevators and Escalators (Includes Requirements for Elevators, Escalators, Dumbwaiters, Moving Walks, Material Lifts, and Dumbwaiters With Automatic Transfer Devices).  Since these are published guidelines managed by ASME, they are not free so I could not research the safety guidelines for speed.  I have been on many of these things in my life and I can say (with some authority) that the ones in my building could use a little more speed.

It took 25 seconds to get from the bottom to the top (or the top to the bottom depending).  I used the a very accurate measurement when timing my ride (1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, etc.) and all my trips were close to 25 seconds (or Mississippi's if you like).  I think that the company could save some money if they cranked up the speed.  Let's assume the following for the sake of this blog...

1. There are 5,000 people in my building.
2. Each person uses the escalator twice per day (once up and once down).
3. Each person makes $25 / hour.
4. Each person works 230 days a year at this building (figuring for weekends, holidays, travel days, sick days and vacations).
5. Every second saved in escalator travel will be spent in productive work (this is the biggest assumption!).
6. ASME will allow us to increase the speed such that it only takes 20 seconds to get from the top to bottom (or bottom to top) of the escalator

Ok, if you are buying this premise so far we have this...

1. Each person makes about 0.7¢ per second
2. Each person will save 10 seconds per day (5 seconds per trip for 2 trips) for a total savings per day per person of $0.07.
3. For 5,000 people, the per day savings will be $350.00.
4. For 230 days, the annual savings is $80,500.00.

Now this may seem like craziness to you but I have seen some other proposed cost savings measures and this one is more feasible than most and the data is far more accurate (and can be backed up).  I had to use the escalators 4 times today just to make change and could have saved $0.14.  I did make good use of my 100 seconds on the escalators though, I basically wrote this blog in my head while going up and down (and up and down).

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon