Dutch Subway Slide: An Exercise in Efficiency

Leave it to the Dutch to turn a playground feature into public-transit innovation. Next time you’re tripping down a set of dirty, crowded subway stairs in your city, just remember that there’s a better way. The Dutch are calling it a “transit accelerator.”

The Pop-Up City blog writes:

It’s officially called a ‘transfer accelerator’ by Dutch railway maintenance company ProRail, but everyone else would say it’s a slide. An awesome slide. Installed next to a stairway at the newly renovated railway station Overvecht in the city of Utrecht, the slide offers travelers the opportunity to quickly reach the railway tracks when they’re in a hurry. But above all, the slide is a great instrument to make the city more playful. The ‘transfer accelerator’ was designed by Utrecht-based firm HIK Ontwerpers, and installed as the final piece of the renovation of the Overvecht railway station.

Chicago’s CTA Tattler blog is already soliciting opinions from Chicagoans on where they would put one in the Windy City.

So what about New York?

Union Square? Grand Central? Wall Street?