Wonder if a little scotch guard would help out

you probably have carpet around units. I had same problem at department stores with carpet. Try to ground to escalator truss then ground truss to earth ground ,should take care of it. you may have to ground both sides of escalator.

Most of the time it will be static charge however I did have a funny story having this actually live when touched. Back in the day, we had some old Westinghouse escalators that didn't have any handrail entry switches. Then the regs changed and these had to be fitted. The repairs crew came and installed them then left. About a year later, after the handrail had started to stretch, and started to rub on the conduit supplying the switches with the 125v dc. Of course, it wore away the conduit and insulation on the wiring, and hence made the carbon in the handrail become active. Everyone that got to the top of the thing got a zap!! Funny times!!

hit the nail on the head, the down unit has carpet at the top and its the one im getting the complaints about

We use to lay old Otis shunts wire over the handrail then grounded to the truss

The shunt is the correct thing to use, but it must touch the cover of the handrail not the cloth part. Ive done it plenty of times, always worked.