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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."

14 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah. by Faust7 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  2. Very Neat by squaretorus · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!

  3. Mmm.. lawsuits.. by walmass · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  4. Re:You know... by archeopterix · · Score: 5, Informative
    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...
    Now this should look funny. 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.
  5. Re:You know... by io333 · · Score: 5, Funny

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

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

  6. Re:Transition by x0n · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --

    PGP KeyId: 0x08D63965
  7. Coming Autumn 2003 by dewie · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  8. Will it be like... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    ... 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.
  9. This travelator is a lot of fun by James+Durie · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  10. Many points of failure? by Savant · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  11. it's mechanical.. by way2trivial · · Score: 5, Interesting
    it's a poor solution..
    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
  12. Re:You know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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!".

  13. Re:You know... by klaasvakie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

    IANAP either, BUT I just walked to our wind tunnel at university, and stood in it. It takes no effort to stay upright up to 50km/h. At 80km/h one has to concentrate on staying upright, didn't go faster than that.

    --
    # ssh -l neo the_matrix; killall -9 agent_smith
  14. Re:Transition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    An easier way to do this woul be to do what they've done recently in Japan to solve this issue. They've got sliding panels as the tread that propels you. Toward the beginning and the end, the panels slide over each other, which slows down the railway. This is because each section of the railway lets a certain number of these sliding panels through per minute, but as they panels lap over each other, the speed needed to let the same number of panels through decreases. This is probably tricky to visualize.

    In the middle of the runway, the panels look like this (different numbers to indicate the different individual panels)

    11111111111________22222222222________33333333333
    ________22222222222________33333333333________4444 4444444

    (sorry about the multiple _s...I've never had to try and find an alternative for on /. before)
    At the ends, they slide together like this:

    111111111112222222222233333333333
    222222222223333333333344444444444

    So that even though the speed slows down, the panels don't squish each other, breaking the machine. I saw it on TV, and the dude was just whipping along the corridor. If they combined this system at a higher pace with the roller system they've got in France, they could probably take the speed up a fair bit.