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."

Comments

Escalators were scary enough as a kid.

[mikeophile]

Imagine getting a pants leg caught in one of these people gobblers.

Re:Escalators were scary enough as a kid.

[Conspir8or]

"Jaaaaane! Stop this crazy thing!!"

Re:Escalators were scary enough as a kid.

[mdielmann]

Long dresses are going to make a comeback in european pr0n. I keep getting a vision of Benny Hill doing a skit where the real action starts when the lady hits the deceleration point.

Yeah.

[Faust7]

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."
"...."

Very Neat

[squaretorus]

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!

Mmm.. lawsuits..

[walmass]

US personal injury lawyers are already lobbying to bring this to the USA.

Re:You know...

[io333]

Not if it travels in a tunnel and they evacuate all the air.

I loved that old story. I hope this really happens!

Re:Transition

[x0n]

Yep, it's all very clinical and precise until you bring alcohol into the equasion.

Strip running

[F4Codec]

So when can we see the first (Asimov) strip runners.

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.

Coming Autumn 2003

[dewie]

He's been sent back through time on a mission: to move between different locations!

Arnold Schwarzenegger is... "The Travelator".

Will it be like...

[Anonymous Coward]

... in Futurama - where if they malfunction or you don't know how to get off them properly - you get spatted against the nearest wall???

Pfft... tourist.

Timeline

[Faust7]

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.

Re:You know...

[Anonymous Coward]

"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!".

Re:kinda silly

[GMontag]

We have few traditions on SlashDot and you are stepping on the most sacred.

Re:Expressways

[phillymjs]

---->---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

Wow, Travelator

[sharkey]

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?

Re:Motorway speeds?

[b1t r0t]

Better yet, let's put in seats for people to sit on. And then we could put groups of seats together on a fixed platform. At that point you don't need all the surface area, so you can propel the platforms from the edges.

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.