Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

High Speed Travelator

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the umbrella-jousting dept.

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."

3 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. kinda silly by chef_raekwon · · Score: 0, Redundant

    don't most major airports already have this 'magic carpet ride'?

    --
    We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
  2. Motorway speeds? by gclef · · Score: 1, Redundant

    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.

    1. Re:Motorway speeds? by thasmudyan · · Score: 1, Redundant

      About wind resistance: you could construct a tube around the travelator and then blow wind through it at the speed of the trottoir. Yeah, that might work.

      But think about the possibilities for gruesome injuries! Naa, this whole travelator concept only goes so far...

      I think I'll wait for my magnetic/antigrav boots, undulating floors, or at least small transportation capsules that go around through pipes. Maybe we should just redesign cities to accomodate more people more elegantly, that would be a start!