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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."
Imagine getting a pants leg caught in one of these people gobblers.
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!
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.
unless it is contained in a tunnel with the wind being blown behind you at the same speed. Oops, the conveyor belt stops, blown onto your face, sue! Oops, wind stops, blown backwards, smash the face of the person behind you, sue! You will have people literally running into the back of you.
PGP KeyId: 0x08D63965
Not if it travels in a tunnel and they evacuate all the air.
I loved that old story. I hope this really happens!
Yep, it's all very clinical and precise until you bring alcohol into the equasion.
PGP KeyId: 0x08D63965
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....
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.
"But if you enclose the belt in a tube, with air moving with the speed of the belt (either artificially propelled or just "pulled" by the belt), the wind resistance becomes less of a problem."
Until you fart! "Damn, this smell has been with me all the way from Pittsburgh!".
Does it have an "emergency reverse" button, in case of invasion?
We have few traditions on SlashDot and you are stepping on the most sacred.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
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?
How about good ol' walking ?!
Well, have you ever been in a public space with a large group of people? As simple as the concept is, many people can't seem to understand that there is a reason people go to airports, etc... they are trying to get somewhere! However, throw in a few shutter-bugs taking pictures of everything, or social butterflies that have to stop and talk to every third person they see, and you've got one large fleshy traffic jam. If I could bypass all of the slow, stupid and otherwise unmotivated people by stepping onto a rolling sidewalk, I'm there! At least there would be a minimum speed. Of course, I'd be one of the people still trying to speed-walk while on the thing, but even when stuck behind someone I'd still be moving.
Of course, I can see this invention starting a whole new type of road rage... perhaps I should go to France and try it out before they make laws against bumping someone out of the way "by accident."
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.
How will the Indian version work? Will there be mannequins permanently mounted to the moving surface for the passengers to hang on?
The far left lane would move at the maximum speed, whereas successive lanes to the right would be decelerated.
No, a better way would the to have the lanes getting faster as you move right. Just as driving on the left is superior, more logical, etc., etc.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
---->---7mph->--
---->---8mph->--
---->---9mph->--
That won't work. You'll just get some stupid old lady in the fast lane, walking backwards at 2mph with her blinker on.
~Philly
thud.
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
We have that. It's called the sea. What you just described is known, in areas where the sea is generally warm enough, as "surfing".
They're not a bunch of cheapskates! They used the printer ink; naturally.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"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.
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.
Here's the really cool (and tricky) part: then you put the motors inside the platforms themselves. Then you don't need miles long rubber belts that can wear out. Just replace them with concrete floors. And to keep people from falling out, add walls. If you add a roof, you can operate them outside, even when it's raining! And for more capacity (to make up for having the seats in the first place), you can use more than one platform stacked together.
I think it would look something like this.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
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.
Chicken.
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...
Ahh but that's where you are wrong. This is a new business model of getting people to their computers/internet connection faster. That way they can buy stuff from your website (i.e. amazon.com) much more often. If you can move the people 50 times faster than they can walk, you can increase your profits by a factor of 50 (well not really but it's good enough for the patent office). And, of course, if someone walks on the Amazon.com travelator to get to a computer to order off of BarnesandNoble.com, it is a DMCA violation.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
You can test your theory by standing up in the back of a pickup truck at various speeds. Since the friction of the belt would be identical to the friction of the bed of the pickup truck it's a good analogy. Anyone have a pickup truck, some open road and a couple of nutty friends to perform the experiment?