Slashdot Mirror
High Speed Travelator
Anonymous Award writes "Remember those old Isaac Asimov tales of cities of the future, where everybody walked along on moving sidewalks, sometimes clear across a country? Today's airport travelators have always been disappointingly pale imitations of these, but now in
Paris we may be seeing the
true birth of this wonderfully dangerous mode of mass transportation. Its
already as fast as a bus, but when they can crank them up to motorway speeds...
well, lets just say this may have a better chance of having cities designed
around it than certain other recent innovations."
When it gets up to a certain speed, the wind resistance against your body will be greater than the friction of the belt against your feet, and you will cease to move forward...
by Heinlein was one of the first ScFi stories I ever read!
Glad to see it coming to fruition!
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
See also The Roads Must Roll; Robert Heinlein's book based upon moving roads and what happens when the guys who maintain them go on strike ...
don't most major airports already have this 'magic carpet ride'?
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
Imagine getting a pants leg caught in one of these people gobblers.
As mentioned in the article, the most difficult issue is the transition from moving on the walkway and moving on stationary ground.
It seems to me the best solution to this is to have "lanes" in the walkway. The far left lane would move at the maximum speed, whereas successive lanes to the right would be decelerated. When exits were reached, you could easily step to the right to get to a lower speed; the transition between 9km/h and 6km/h is still a transition, but its less than 9km/h to 0km/h.
"Stumble before you crawl"
Am I the only one who would be embarrassed to use this simply by virtue of its name?
"How are you getting there?"
"Oh, I'm taking the travelator."
"...."
The coolest voice ever.
I read this this morning on the BBC and immediately booked a weekend in Paris for myself and my beloved - hey its summer, the flights were under 200 sterling return and I cant wait to see her fall on her arse as we get on this thing!
I'm just hoping they dont stop you taking skateboards onto this thing!
It's unlikely you'll ever reach motoway speeds: wind resistance against a moving person at that speed will cause lots of problems (translation: you'll be on your butt somewhere around 40km/h). Also, it should be noted that the "bus speed" they list in the article is 9km/h. That's not exactly speedy by open road standards, but is probably pretty fast by congested downtown standards.
What an accomplishment!
Did they smash a bottle of cheap Champagne over it to dedicate it?
US personal injury lawyers are already lobbying to bring this to the USA.
This one goes about three to four times as fast as a normal one does. It has acceleration and decelleration zones at the beginning and end, as it would be far too fast to get on otherwise.
----
"The real problem nowadays is how to move crowds; they can travel fast over long distances with the TGV (high-speed train) or airplanes, but not over short distances (under 1km)," he says.
---
How about good ol' walking ?!
Where does it mention motorway speeds? It mentions that the second stage moves up to 9km/h and that it will probably be used mostly for distances of less than 1km.
Say, whats the bandwidth of one of these if you can stack boxes of DVD-RW on one end and take them off the other.
Julian.
He's been sent back through time on a mission: to move between different locations!
Arnold Schwarzenegger is... "The Travelator".
Jurisprudence Fetishist Gets Off On A Technicality --theonion.com
This sounds even better than my idea of having wheels for feet.
Curses!
And what about moving WiFi hotspots?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Tavelator is better than "The moving faster than walking speed while walking at normal speed device" (name brought to you by Leonard da Quirm)
Today: The introduction of the travelator eliminates the need for walking.
10 years: Our legs become strange, archaic appendages that surgeons will handily remove for a small fee.
100 years: Our brains float around in little hovering domes.
I want a cobalt blue dome.
The coolest voice ever.
I went Paris for the weekend in March and we went through Montparnasse one day and went on this travelator.
They have guys watching to stop certain people getting on, I have heard they have had to pay out for injuries to some people.
First it accelerates you to 9kph then it is exactly like a normal travelator only much faster.
I loved it.
The only problems are the acceleration and deceleration phases. It's very bumpy. You have to hold on to the rail. If they can fix those aspects these things will start appearing in airports everywhere.
It would seem to me that the sheer number of moving parts in a kilometre or so of walkway must make the chances of frequent failures pretty high compared to other public transport methods. How fault-tolerant is it? Any French Slashdotters able to answer?
Would be interesting to see some schematics.
http://static.hugi.is/video/fyndin/dctf-1.wmv
Holy crap.
Wasn't it soemthing similar in Clarke's Nightfall? Something about similar sidewalks that moved at different speeds in different sections...
better would be organic, something like stomach cillia, where the floor doesn't move the length of the journey, but little tiny bits from in place do- not my idea, something I read once.
the individual elements take turns dropping, moving a tiny bit, pushing up again, and moving you a tiny bit... done repeatedly= ya move down the floor- which doesn't move.
less to break down, and spilled drinks and food (as long as they aren't too hot) are actually welcome...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
...And it's located in the tunnels beneath the Geneve airport. They've got a system like this there, but I'm not sure they run it at the same speed. At least I didn't think it was moving that fast when I used it. Quite fun, atually.
I also use a similar thing in a local supermarket. All you'd have to do is crank up the speed on it to equal the Paris one, but then again, it's slighly elevated and I don't think people like being catapulted from the 2nd floor...
Is this a reinvention of the wheel (Kakakaka! Transportation!) or did I miss something? Prolly the latter, so please releive me of my blissful ignorance.
All rites reversed 2010
I can see this coming to America and watching all the overweight people fail their DEX checks, run off to lawyers, and sue it into the ground, ruining it for the rest of us. If you can't do the run/hop to get on, or the hop/run to get off, then go for a walk, you obviously need one.
Extending the hand rails a ways past the moving mat on either end makes the transitions VERY easy to do even for a total clutz. From the pic I can't tell if they knew that or not.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Teavelators, escalators, revolving doors, they seem natural and intuitive to those who are used to them.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
As an idea, these expressways are a fairly good way of transporting humans. They travel at constant speed, so there should be no obvious difference to the traveller, no matter what the speed is. Of course, in reailty we'd experience air resistence; try sticking your head out of the window on a car going at 70mph. but there may be some way of reducing this in enclosed tunnels, like blowing air at the same velocity as the floor is moving.
In Asimov's vision (I think), the different-speed strips were parallel to each other, not serial like this French version. This meant that you's step to the side to go onto a faster strip, and keep going until you hit the fastest one, which could be several hundred miles an hour. As the differential in speed between the strip you are on and those near is never more than about 1mph, you won't do yourself any serious damage by falling over. see diagram:
---->---7mph->--
---->---8mph->--
---->---9mph->--
etc.
This structure makes them easier to 'network'. The only danger, I suppose, is if a strip breaks then the speed-differential between it and then next one could be massive.
I suppose any serious implementation would use some kind of semiconductor thang to decrease friction, and on a wide scale could be very energy efficient. These things are probably more useful to society than a Segway, but you'd have to design a city around them from the ground up, so I doubt they'll change the way we live just yet.
These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined. -- Homer Simpson
When I first read "already as fast as a bus" I envisioned this thing cranking along at 30mph, people hanging on for dear life with the wind blowing their hair back. 9 km/h is a decent jogging pace, so maybe they are referring to the average speed of a bus in Paris. I am unimpressed.
Besides, in the first month they are going to have at least one old lady fall on the exit rollers with her gigantic suitcase and 40 other people will be force-fed into the melee to create a giant writhing heap.
All it will take is one idiot and his lawyer to mess it up for everyone else.
Have you seen my stapler?
Does it have an "emergency reverse" button, in case of invasion?
This is a neat thing. I guess they're using it or have at least tried it out at a few other places around the world.
I had read in a newspaper report some months back that authorities in Mumbai, India were planning to install this kind of 'travelator' to link two of the most important railway stations in Mumbai, Churchgate and CST. But I don't remember seeing any action on it since then.
Btw, I would like to advise the travelator operators in Paris to hand out barf bags to people travelling on these contraptions. *heh*
Perhaps we should invent something that speeds up mentally lazy peoples brains, before we humour the physically lazy ones.
Wow! After I say goodbye to the wife Jane, my boy Elroy, daughter Jane, and pat Astro on the head, I can hop on one of these babies and start another productive day at Spacely Sprockets. Ain't the future grand?
If you ask me, this was a much better design than the neck-breaking jallopy installed in Montparnasse Station...
They also experimented some 30 years ago with one that was shaped like an integral sign; instead of a rubber plate, there were solid plates which slide sideways at the end, effectively yielding a slower speed but without the jarring hells-on-wheels acceleration.
I live in Paris and tried it a while ago. It works like a charm. The acceleration and deceleration are surprisingly smooth provided you keep your feets on the ground. Then it is exactly like a normal conveyor mat. I like it and I see no drawbacks.
Will they let me ride my Segway on it?
why can't people just be happy where they are?
"Jane! Arrêtez cette chose folle! Je me rends!"
Ehem. This excludes the possibility of highway-speed travelators, now doesn't it?
It's not _that_ fast, folks.
The Montparnasse sidewalk was corded off when I visited it a few weeks ago.
For we 'merkins who don't grok the metric system, it's going at about running speed. This won't blow your hair back or anything.
-cmiller
what good is a trottoir roulant rapide.....if you are unable to talk...err walk.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
An old sfnal name for these things was "slidewalks". Better name than travelator.
This already happens on escalators when idiots with large bags forget to move away from the exit.
The RIAA today sued France, for having high-bandwidth moving sidewalks that "encourage piracy." France immediately surrendered.
How do the little rollers in the acceleration
section handle tiny points of women's high heels?
I'm not sure if you've ever tried jumping on or off a moving car/bus/boat onto terra ferma or vica versa. But it's not all that hard once you've done it a couple of times. You just have to get it set in your mind that you have to go from standing still to running (or vica versa) without actually having to change your velocity (i.e. accelerate/decelerate).
Of course this isn't particularly practical for the general public...but it would be fun to watch the brave take a running leap onto a belt moving at say 5ms^-1
My spelling isn't bad, I'm evolving the language
How about we use this idea for certain roads where Point A and Point B are 400 miles away...
;)
Example:
Drive your car onto Interstate 95 where a rubber coated ramp picks up the car. There would be 3 lanes... Left would be fastest, if you knew that you would be on the road for a while... Middle for those that don't need to go to far (one city to another)... Right is slowest for those who would be getting off soon and transferring onto an exit conveyor where the speed would gradually reduce to normal commuting speed (30 mph?). Obviously you would need a way to control the cars from speeding down these ramps and transferring between lanes, but this is a work in progress
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
belt a- acceleration, lots of long straight grooves, about 1/4" wide, 1/4" apart, (like the top of an escalator tread) moves at same old airport speeds.. about 50 ft long
belt b- high speed, same width & groove, starts at the last 20 ft of belt A, interlaced.. slowly raises altitude until it is above the height of belt A, and takes you from low to high speed
belt c- slowdown, same as A in reverse
only restriction, folks can not be allowed to walk down belt B,AT ALL, keep the spacing so that when you hit the slowdown belt, you are re-packed at the same distance as entry.. just hold on in place, or they will be one hell of a dogpile at the transition end..
for longer distances, you can have more gradients in the belts...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0, 1299,DRMN_15_2087992,00.html
;~)
z isco. htm
_ lospel ambres.htm
As usual, some people just can't seem to get along.
Personally, I think more could be done with this concept. If the center, fastest "strip" was a sit down type one, wouldn't this really be nothing more than a permanently available, perpetual people bus. Think about it, moving McDonalds, talk about fast food!
As well, these conveyers could easily be constructed as subways. I can also see these being used at large exhibitions, galleries, parks and muesums.
Other conveyers of note:
Zizco, world's longest single flight horizontal curve conveyor
(15.6 km)
www.conveyor-dynamics.com/projects/popup/fs_
Los Pelambres, world's largest downhill conveyor system
(3 conveyors, 12.7 km, 1296 m drop, 8700 tph)
www.conveyor-dynamics.com/projects/popup/fs
Words to men, as air to birds.
They're not a bunch of cheapskates! They used the printer ink; naturally.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Rollerblading! Yup, can't get away from the things there.
One of the main hobbies of people in Paris is sitting in sidewalk cafes watching people go by. If this invention catches on, what will happen? Will people sit in the cafes and people will go wooshing by, or will the cafe also be on the moving part?
I seem to recall they had a 'travelator' on Gladiators. A steep uphill travelator going the wrong way followed by a rope swing would certainly liven up a trip through the airport.
.. not during acceleration and deceleration zones !
;-)
By the way once you are used to ir, you can even walk in those zones
SLK
Why don't they use something like a maglevel/chairlift. On which individual carriages are propelled (at any acceleration you like :-) down a track that doesn't have the limitation of being flat and straight.
My spelling isn't bad, I'm evolving the language
R. A. Heinlein, _The Roads Must Roll_
And it was a 5 MPH difference between lanes. Every lane has to have separate motors, etc, so you don't want too many of them. 5 MPH is a brisk walk so it's not hard to move from one to the next.
when you know the link to the "recent innovations" is Ginger before you click it (and in fact ,I haven't clicked it yet, but I can only assume)
I've been on an amusement-park ride where you come down onto (or up thru) the center of a large rotating disc, and you walk at your own speed out to the edge, whose speed matches the constantly moving belt (in this case it was a chain of vehicles). It can be made arbitrarily easy to take by making the disc bigger.
I have a dim memory of reading something by Arthur C Clarke (I think it was him). His suggestion was to use a material that stiffens vertically under the influence of a magnetic field but remains fluid in the horizontal direction. By suitably arranging the movement of the fields, you'd end up with a footway with a continuously variying speed from outside to inside. Much like the Asimov belts other have referred to, but without discrete transition zones. Sorry this is such a vague reference. Perhaps others can add better information.
The rise of the big asses.
No! I thought, uh, I thought I'd chauffeur myself this evening. Yes, that's what I thought. How difficult could it be? I'm sure the manual will indicate which lever is the velocitator and which the deceleratrix, hmm?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Betcha didn't see that coming!!
the acceleration !
;-)
Usualy you do not have any kind if acceleration on such a conveyor. But there, you go faster and faster up to the cruse speed.... just crusin'
SLK
As a kid I read a book, written I think in the 1950s which I have never found again, called Metatopia. It was a kind of hybrid socialist/capitalist society and the author effectively predicted the internet, though an audio-only version based on telephones. (I am not making this up but, as I say, I've never seen it again or heard it referred to). Anyway, before this is marked off-topic by my personal stalker (are you having a good day?) the Metatopian transport system was based on small independent transport vehicles with, I think, overhead monorails. They couldn't overtake but the operating system ensured that the speed on any given section of track was some kind of average of what all the current travellers wanted - completely unrealisable with 50s technology but an interesting notion. What would be the people carrying efficiency of a flat version of a modern cablecar of the automatic type where the separation of the cars can vary with the traffic? It might be overkill for a short distance like the Montparnasse run (180M), but would it work on the level over a kilometre or so?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Not "travelators," dammit, SLIDEWALKS.
Or Popular Mechanics - I don't remember which.
The idea was, that the plates would rotate in the "Station", slowing down close to the platfrom. I believe the theory behind it was that the number of plates going past a point in a given amount of time was always constant.
When the plates were rotated sideways and perpendicular to the direction of motion (in the Station) they moved quite slowly, but as they left the station, they would be rotated so they would be closer to being in parallel with the direction of motion. By rotating, they would "lengthen" and to maintain the same number of plates per second going by a point, their speed would increase.
Clever idea - part of the concept was to pump air and widen the "tube" at the station, so that there would note be a "wind" each time the passenger came into a station and sped up and slowed down.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
This appears to be a resurrection of the slidewalk of mid-last-century, as found in some airports. It seems to be shorter than those. But is is an experiment, after all.
Did Asimov write a tale about slidewalks? I do not recall encountering such.
Robert Heinlein wrote a short story The Roads Must Roll! in the 1950's about huge slidewalks that crossed the nation like interstates and which had segments with variable speeds to allow people to get on and off safely, without a lot of acceleration. Even so, accidents happened, including fatal ones.
Heinlein's short story appears in an anthology with several of his other short stories written at about the same time. (sorry, I do not recall the book title.)
Is there some sort of acceleration/decelaration belt or are the people just supposed to walk off of the belt traveling at highway speeds - if they have to walk off, wouldn't the momentum kill them and everyone that their flying bodies impail?
A basic invention i just came up with is not dissimilar to a train - you get into a box that has rollers/wheels on the bottom. Internal friction in the wheels/rollers will accelerate the box on the conveyor belt and the box can then be accelerated to whatever speed wanted (extremely fast if in a vacuum). The same effect will slow the box down when it comes off the other end.
Boxes can then be sent back using a travellator that goes the other way, or another idea is to make them collapsible so they can go back under the conveyor belt.
The next question is how to design slip roads and junctions so we can build a whole network of the things.
A sliproad is pretty easy - you just have another conveyor belt going the same speed next to the one you already have and you cross over (either in the box, or in the pedestrian version).
Junctions could be nasty due to the concept of traffic jams. The whole thing would have to be computer controlled with each box knowing its route through the traffic so that traffic jams couldn't happen.
I would just love to run through it as fast as possible. I'm sure the feeling would be cool Or even try to run in the opposite direction. I'm sure some kid tried it already.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
there are rollers moving at 2 kp/h at the beggining and endpoints of the travelator, so acceleration is first 0 mph (or walking speed) then 2 kp/h then 9 kp/h 9-2 = 7 so highest acceleration is 7 k/ph. It seems to me that this is really a question of learning how to use a new device.
This sig blantantly stolen by a pack of robo-monkeys.
I recall my first visit to North America, and my first experiences with turnstiles and escalators. (I know there are such in Europe as well, I just saw them in North America first.)
I just couldn't make sense of what the turnstiles do (I must have been like 15), they seemed crude and dangerous. I didn't want to touch those things, so I just leaped over them (still having paid the fare) until the subway cops stopped me and explained how it worked.
I admit I was a bit belligerent with them, because I was used to the honour system, where they pretty much trust you, but they have random ticket inspectors. It saves money to trust commuters!!! I told them that they were barbaric and savage.
Not quite there yet!
Hopefully they can speed things up quite a bit more.
not Asamov. If you're going to link a story to old Sci-Fi, at least get the author right.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Someone, hurry out and patent this. Ya know, an innovative "fast" version of the thingies we have at airports. This version is faster, so it is innovative, and totally non-obvious. Prior art? Naw.. that doesn't matter in America anymore. I think it may be too late though, because either MS or Jeff Bezos will probably have patented this by the time I post this message.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
I saw on the TV this evening that Arnie might become California's "governator" as he may be considering a political career. Hopefully he would be taking Californians *into* the future...
If I were 'John Connor' I'd stay away from this...
I was pretty disappointed when I read this article. As fast as a Paris bus? Yeah....but the bus only does an average of 9 km/hr. That's pretty lame. I want a long distance travelator (under a different name, of course. Maybe "Pedestrian Speedwalk/Highway"?) that does up to 75 km/hr. Now that would be cool!
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
Now all we need is a crowd full of midgets stretching from Paris to Nice, and some really kick-ass midget music at either end to induce the crowd-surfing effect.
Am I the only one that steps on these, and then turns around about halfway there, and tries walking the other way, walking in place for several minutes? Imagine the entire country walking in place on these things... This isn't going to work out well at all.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
I gotta know - can I segway and this legway?
This is where I found the main problem with moving sidewalks in general: they can only go straight. I had to walk all the freaking way from the terminal area to the connecting area, and out to the other terminal area. That sucked.
For those who don't know, the terminals at DFW are semicircles. That time I had to go from a high C terminal to a mid A. I guess I should've taken the train, but I didn't realize just how far away it was!
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
[sarcasim]
How can this even get off the ground if future cities are designed around the Segway AKA Ginger? Ginger is the future "Human Transporter" . Ginger is "IT" !. Steve Jobs told me so! There's no place for something like this.
[/sarcasim]
Seriously though, I think the *real* future is in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (whether they be private cars or public buses) for three reasons. First, that's where all the serious R&D money is going right now. Secondly, they require no great leap of concept and will be more psychologically acceptable to the public (i.e. its just a car with a different engine as opposed to something strange and possibly "dangerous"). Third, other than adding hyrdogen pumps to existing gas stations, they requie no expesive and massive public works project because they can use the current road infrastructure. The gas station problem can be handled by a government regulation on the lines of "if you run a gas station and have more than two pumps, at least one has to be for hydrogen".
Now if they could jack up a fuel cell powerful enough for a jet engine capable of inter-city/cross-country transport, we'd be set.
In the Lije Bailey stories, one (_The_Caves_of_Steel_) decribes the slidewalks
I don't have it handy but I'm sure Asimov's book Caves of Steel has the same thing going on - ide travelators which get faster at the centre are the means used to get around the city. Reading that guys' page I see they were called 'strips'.
If you look at this cover which was used for the book you'll see the hero is standing on one! Heinlin appears to have got there first though (he wrote Roads in 1940, Asimov wrote Caves in 1953)
I guess this was the Asimov reference in the slashdot article, but no-one else seems to be mentioning it...
-Baz
Where do you want to be dragged by the balls today?
I read that as a part of the rest of the post at first, and wondered if that was how those roads worked...
If you follow the instructions it's safe.
Once in the middle part, it's like a normal travelator, and you can walk or don't pay attention.
The accleration phase and the deccelaration is on a carpet of little wheels.
It's like you are on roller and some one pull/retain you by the arm.
If you grip firmly with your hand and your feet flat, there are no problems of stability or any risk to fall.
It's like people who try to drive a bycicle without hand, it's possible but if you bump, the more likely you will fall.
But it was a little bit disapointing, it's not enough speedy, once you are used to the acceleration/decceleration phase, i will like to have a real 30 km/h travelator, that would be fun and more efective to travel quicker.
This is nearly one year old.
It's so so. When you're at full speed it shows a quite standard and good behaviour but acceleration and deceleration phases are weird even whe you get used to them.
I think proper time distortion using anti-matter would help a lot smoothing these phases.
Just put a sign up that says you are using it at youre own risk and that the elderly, women and other idiots should just walk. Of course there should be a normal walkway to the side (if for no other reason then to allow maintenance)
My fists start to itch when I read that stupid womans remark about her mother being scared. You don't have to fucking use it. I am tired of having the world fit itself to the lowest common denominator. This is a nice idea wich could solve some basic problems in large public areas like airports. Stupid people will always be falling over. Don't let the stupid people rule our lives.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Arthur C Clarke's The City and the Stars had roads that moved faster smoothly as you walked to their centre, in the city Diaspar, the last city on earth a billion years in the future. Real sensawonda.
what if one is driving one of those jet cars they tested in the desert. Or flying on an airplane, and shooting a bullet out the back? Its gonna hang in the air steady (relative to the on-looker) longer than if it were just dropped, wouldn't it? You could even walk up to it and pick it, given it's relative momentum? Arrgh, crap. No it won't. It'll just fall down like a rock.
Buses and other carriage type transport are not well suited for this type of tranport because of the waiting time involved for the next carriage to come along. If you travel by public transport in a large city you will notice that most of the travelling time is spend waiting not acutually moving.
This solves that problem. You can get on any time.
I can remember a similar technology used in wheat processing plants. (very high factories) To move up and down there where belts with foot and handholds moving up and down between floors. Faster then stairs and not the waiting time for elevators. Of course there where strict warnings on how to use them, office staff was not allowed to use them.
Dangerous? Perhaps, you could fall all the way from the top to the bottom but then stupid people will always find a way to hurt themselves. It is called natural selection.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
better, but the world's longest covered escalator is in Hong Kong. A fascinating ride, I might add, particularly for a fine set of eateries and bars on the side.
More than mere navel gazing.
The Loderway Accelerating Walkway, circa 1998, used multiple belts at different speeds. The transitions between belts involved a 5mm drop and small-diameter end rollers, instead of a transition plate. That was probably the simplest solution to the problem. Two systems were installed in Australia, field tests were claimed to be successful, but the manufacturer no longer seems to be around.
NKK (yes, the zipper company) and Mitsubishi have both built prototype "accelerating moving walkways", but neither system seems to have been installed more than once. NKK's system involves expansible plate-type steps that become longer in the high-speed section. The Mitsubishi system works by turning a corner, so that a series of short wide plates transform into a series of long narrow plates. Both of these systems avoid difficult transition points, but are complicated and expensive throughout the whole length of the system. The Loderway and Paris systems have transitions, which adds risk, but the long section is just a plain belt, so the cost of long systems is manageable.
... it's called 'The Roads Must Roll'.
You are all fartheads.
O, where are mod points when you need them. :)
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
You have your lanes like above, but with tiny handrail lanes between them. Then, looking sideways at the thing you get this:
________ ________
___/________\______/________\___ etc.
Basically, the handrails gradually come out of the ground and stay level for a while. Every now and then, they disappear, and people can only make lane changes in those "down" sections. This should also prevent everyone from getting on at a really busy location and rushing over to the fast lane all at once.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
french joke
Oh the possibilities.
Actually, this significantly predates Asimov and Heinlein in SciFi. It goes back to HG Wells, and When the Sleeper Wakes, which I highly recommend.
r wa kes/5/
He described not only airplanes, televisions and moving pedestrian roadways, but much of the modern way of life before it existed.
http://www.online-literature.com/wellshg/sleepe
Suppose, during the acceleration phase, that they didn't have 3-foot-wide belts, but rather lots of 1-cm-wide belts, all moving at slightly different speeds? Now, things might seem to be more unstable that way, but if you do do things that way you can have a much lower acceleration. For example, initially 80% of the belts are fixed, and 20% move at 1 kph. Then you phase out another 20% of the fixed belts, and phase in more 1 kph belts. Then, since the accelerations are now microaccelerations, you'd be supposed to walk on. Or they could even have chairs on there. you take a chair, slide it around to the start point, and sit down on it (which puts its weight on the belts, causing it to begin accelerating.) -
I dunno. Probably just another one of my ideas...
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Try walking it's good for you...
These sorts riding this thing will get injured for sure. Imagine the warnings on the wall before you get on the belt: "Only physically fit teenagers allowed on the Belt!"
In Arthur C. Clarke's Against the Fall of Night there was a city wide transit system that operated like this, only it could move each person at a different speed by being able to control arbitrary areas of the walkway, and move them through the surrounding surface. An explanation involving materials that could be translated between different dimensions was given, if I recall correctly.
*encourages scientists to develop such things*
World Out of Time by Larry Niven, in which an architect-turned-corpsicle used by a future society as a slave/galactic explorer travels via the black hole at the center of our galaxy 250K years into the future, to help super-intelligent adults rediscover immortality and fight super-intelligent long-lived children. Oh, and he uses a remote-controlled fusion motor to have Venus nudge the Earth farther away from Jupiter, which the Earth orbits since Jupiter was turned into a mini-sun.
Run of the mill Larry Niven tale.
Anyway, the evacuated world-circling subway was how he got around.
Also make the chair have internet access so I can use
Public transportation, standing in the open, and moving at high speed don't go well together. They are having problems at 9km/h and if they go much beyond that, more people are bound to freak out and make things ugly for the rest. I think this problem was solved rather elegantly for downhill skiing lifts. Have you ever used a gondola-type lift? The idea is that multiple carts hung on a steel belt carry (sitting) people up the mountain at high speed. The tricky part is that when such cart approaches the landing zone, it is transferred from the rope onto rails. It decelerates and people get out. As it (slowly) rolls forward, it gets hooked on a belt again and picks up the speed. Using this system for transportation makes even more sense since in the mountains it is (mostly) used for moving people in one direction whereas both directions can be utilized in this case. As for the cost, I think it will be much cheaper than the mountain version and quite competitive with the "travelator". After all, for a mountain lift, a bulk of the cost goes into making this system super-safe AND it has to function under extreme weather conditions (wind, cold, snow, ice, etc.). This should not be the case here.
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
If its like the ones at american airports such as detroit, and there are walls on the side that are not moving. I guarentee that eventually your going to run across someone who's foot catches the wall and moving at that speed however fast, is going to break the guys ankle slaming him face first into the crack between the wall and the belt grinding his nose off like a belt-sander.
Seems like the French aren't afraid to try techno-miracles -- I haven't seen any metro system as good -- London is close, but alot of inconsistencies. In Paris and France, they aren't afraid to try new things (and the US still
doesn't have any high-speed trains....bunch of cowards -- look big behind
their high-tech weapons -- but when it comes to something socially useful...
forget it. It was a shame the French became the only company to provide
Super-Sonic speeds on jets -- and, of course, what did we do in the US?
We banned their use in US airspace because Elmer's cow might stop producing
milk from the occasional bang. Big woop. We could have had coast-to-coast
in 2-3 hours, but noooOOOOOooo.... any real R&D goes to defense where
they don't have to worry about every soldier who breaks a nail suing them.
Americans are just so damn stupid so often....that and greedy. Grrr.
Why can't the US every take the lead in these areas --- because it's always
private development and unless the private developer can prove profit (minus
real or bogus lawsuits) before it is even tested, it falls dead on the design
floor.
I really thought the Casino bosses in Las Vegas just might pull off the
high speed train idea to L.A. But it's been ages since I heard that idea
float.
Everyone in the US seems to want to have the right to stop progress that can benefit large numbers of people -- like all the poltics with the "Rich"
who can buy their congressmen in Menlo Park/Palo Alto and don't want BART
to go through their town -- we were promised it would circle he Bay and have
been paying sales tax to support it since...when, 1970's? Everything
is politics and self-interest.
Grrrrrr.
There has been one of these at the Spadina subway station in Toronto for years. It works pretty well. They use it between two sections of perpendicular subway tunnel that are extraordinarily far apart. After living in Toronto for 8 years, I would say that the escalators and the moving sidewalk are out of order roughly 30% of the time. They're great when they work, but I have to question the cost affectiveness.
Sure it was funny, but it's also very true.
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
When the belt is of significant length you could just stretch it on the outbound leg.
We've all been to the Happiest Place on Earth, right? I recall that the Haunted Mansion had a moving walkway, which allowed you to join in on the even-faster-moving bubble cart chairs in a safe transition. ...(thud, thud thud) Now it's working, thanks everyone, you can get up now!"
I also seem to recall this technology has been used in an open-top cart ride of some sort, where the entire cart is moved by a conveyor belt.
So, it seems to me, if they produced some sort of televator "skiff" (looks like a tall carnival bumper car) they could put a minimalist bench, or steadying bar for the elderly/inebriated/easily spooked. The only requirement would be that the thing went in a loop; perhaps not everyone was required to use it, either. I realize this is more expensive, but I think it would be cheaper than say 6 lawsuits or so. Think of it like the grocery carts with the "infant seats," there will always be a few. Plus, the added benefit of a cool rubbing noise during the belt transition would be a real plus. Probably almost as entertaining as seeing the first guy on a wheelchair trying out the existing televator:
"Hey, this thing is broken, I'm not going anywhere...(thud!) Oh, Hi!
If you want to take this idea a step further, make it an enclosed skiff, oodles more comfortable, charge a fee, and run the skiffs across the country. If you toss out the "supports people on foot" component, you can make the belts simpler, put them on inclines, run them much faster (might need a guide rail in windy outside regions), etc.
For added effect, if you made them buoyant and balanced, you could run them on the downhill stretch of the California Aqueduct through the "Grapevine pass" (if you took out the concrete berms). That'd be a real blast.
You know, the more I think about this, the better it sounds. Road repairs cost billions of dollars a year in the USA. The road damage comes from trying to maintain a continuous "pavement" of some sort, which is pounded on by the elements, and subjected to extreme weight and temperature changes. By instead maintaining a rolling lane, you can make repairs by "bringing the road" with you on a service vehicle, and attaching either a new belt or new rollers, making for very fast repairs. I don't know a ton about the electrical requirements, but it is conceivable that a segment could be self-sustaining with something like a low-maintenance heat pump, instead of an expensive windmill or solar panels. Shoot, we could finally find a use for all that rad waste: thermocouples.
Does anyone know the electrical requirements?
Hydrogen fuel cell cars don't solve the following car-related problems:
They perpetuate the current system of land use where roads and parking lots take up valuable real estate that would be better used for housing, farming, industry, or commerce.
They do nothing to improve the appalling safety record of cars. This point has particular importance for pedestrians and cyclists.
They do nothing to improve or even halt the further suburbanisation of cities, leading to social dislocation and the atomisation of society.
They do nothing to improve travel times and traffic problems.
What problem do they solve? Pollution? Maybe, but how do you produce the hydrogen?
Ice dancing is a lot like ballroom dancing on skates inasmuch as its done with male-female partners, the steps are to the beat of the music, and the dance holds (waltz, tango) are much like ballroom only you are going much faster and the forces are much higher and you are wearing edged instruments that can draw blood on your feet, so the holds are somewhat modified and the partners are farther apart.
Unlike ballroom, when ice dancing is done socially the skaters follow very rigidly choreographed steps that weave in and out along arcs called lobes that fill up the entire skating rink to make up what is called a pattern. The need for this strict choreography will be apparent. When the music is announced, couples line up to start the pattern, the initiation of which takes place on the musical downbeat for each couple at the head of the line. To allow as many couples to participate, each new couple at the head of the line needs to launch with the downbeat of each successive measure of the song. You will observe that the couples back in line will start rocking in synchrony with the music so they are able to launch without hestitation when their downbeat occurs.
I find it interesting to watch individual pairs of skaters who are really good, such as in competitions and the Olympics, but I also like to watch a rink full of social skaters, no individual couple being Olympic quality, but with the skaters stroking and turning across the ice in time with the music, it all looks like a magical merry-go-round.
You know what they say about auto racing -- the spectators are not there to see them race. The really fun part to watch is when a skater trips and brings his or her partner down in a clattering heap (I've wrecked hundreds of times -- it hurts but you keep doing it) -- you then see this choreographed dance come apart as skaters dodge and weave, and sometimes you have a multi-couple pile up as if it were a pileup on I-5.
OK, watching people get hurt is not funny unless it is America's Funniest Home Videos where taking hits to the groin is the only joke. But ice dancing spills are part of the sport just like checking is part of hockey and driving too close to the edge and losing your car on the wall is part of auto racing, and you need to see one of these ice dancing pileups before you get too enthusiastic about high-speed belt-type people mover systems.
The point of this is that with the proper training, you can get large formations of people moving at high speed together like a well-regulated machine, but it takes just one person to trip. Do they have pileups like this in bike races?
The people mover at my airport moves at 2 or 3 mph. Why not have a 10 foot section at 2.5 mph, then as that belt ends people step onto another belt at 5 mph? There could be one more belt as well. By all means keep the lights and sirens to make it clear where people HAVE to step, but if people can step on and off one belt, why not step six times and travel three times faster?
On the side of a regular walkway you have a row of chairs on small individual platforms. You sit in one of the chairs and buckle up, maybe even a over the head bar like on a roller coaster. You push the button to go one lane to the right, or left whichever is away from the walkway. The platform which you are quite well secured to moves over to a rail that is going at a rather slow speed so as not to jar you much. Everytime you push the button towards the center of the travel system the next available railway connector moves you over to the next rail while accelerating you to that rails speed. Looks like this :
|
\
|
This would allow you to go over several lanes to go faster or slower and the difference would even have to be that small the force would be much more than stomping the gas or stepping fairly hard on the brake in a car, and wouldn't matter cuz like I said you are secured in well. When you move back to the slow lane and push the button toward the walkway you are moved into the nearest available "parking spot", depending on where you are going and how many people are there "parking" could mean you have to do that old fashion walking for a ways to get to the place you were going but if you traveled any real distance it's still well worth it.
brought to you by M.D. Inc.