I'd go so far as to posit that there's no such thing as a "broken escalator", that Mitch Hedburg had it exactly right; it is merely a phase transition to stairs, unless the escalator was like, torn in two -- you wouldn't call ice "melted ice" after it melts, you'd (usually) just call it water. Same shit. An escalator merely has a phase change directly into being stairs if it "breaks", unless the escalator was so violently broken it could no longer be considered stairs, either.