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Should Cities Install Moving Sidewalks?
theodp writes "The real problem nowadays is how to move crowds,' said the manager of the failed Trottoir Roulant Rapide high-speed (9 km/h) people mover project. 'They can travel fast over long distances with the TGV (high-speed train) or airplanes, but not over short distances (under 1 km).' Slate's Tom Vanderbilt explores whether moving walkways might be viable for urban transportation. The first moving sidewalks were unveiled at Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition, and at one point seemed destined to supplant some subways, but never took root in cities for a variety of reasons. Vanderbilt turns to science fiction for inspiration, where 30 mph walkways put today's tortoise-like speed ranges of .5-.83 m/s to shame. In the meantime, Jerry Seinfeld will just have to learn to live with 'the people who get onto the moving walkway and just stand there. Like it's a ride.'"
30mph vs .83m/s
WAT
Wouldn't it be a better idea for people to walk those short distances, given how fat people are these days?
unintentionally blank
Caution: Do not stare into laser with remaining eye.
NO. Jesus, walk a little bit people. If you've got to get somewhere faster, ride a bike, take a cab, take the train, drive your car.
Putting moving sidewalks everywhere is about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Forget the exercise argument: imagine the fricking maintenance costs!
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
http://hackaday.com/2010/07/07/heel-treads-make-shoes-go/ Similar concept, personally I'd rather have the moving sidewalks because there is less user input and therefore less possibility for things to go wrong (crashing into each other).
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
Isn't this the problem that Segways were supposed to fix?
Walking is about the only type of semi-mandatory exercise most people get... Yes, you'd be helping the cripples of society get around better, but at the cost of, eventually, crippling the REST of society. My case and point is the movie Wall-E. If you haven't seen it, see it. It's worth understanding my point.
They'll be piloting this program in Cypress Creek.
this will just lead to the escalator effect... Rather then continuing to walk up or down the stairs as they move, people just get on and stand still. The same will happen with these walkways, rather then getting on and adding their own walking pace to the 9km/h, they will stand still and get in everyone elses way.
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
Seriously, no. How much lazier can we get? I personally enjoy walking myself, I don't need something to do it for me... And when I stop walking, I want to stand still, not continue moving. Also kind of seems a waste of electricity.
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The Central Mid-Levels Escalator moves you up and down about a half mile in a busy hilly part of the city. It has its critics but it seemed to be pretty well used when i was there.
I have a theory. America is attempting to commit Manifest Destiny by making its people so fat that is becomes so massive that the rest of the world just collapses in on it. Black hole style.
it's seismic activity. our sidewalks (as well as the buildings) were moving last week here in northern ny. things have been 'moving' a little bit almost every day since then. of course conveyor belts would help us to avoid walking, which would leave us all chubby, so we still have some value (meat) when we get to the end of the 'ride'. see you at the other end of it. we'll walk/ride our bikes, thanks.
meanwhile (all shaking asshide); the corepirate nazi illuminati is always hunting that patch of red on almost everyones' neck. if they cannot find yours (greed, fear ego etc...) then you can go starve. that's their (slippery/slimy) 'platform' now. see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder
never a better time to consult with/trust in our creators. the lights are coming up rapidly all over now. see you there?
greed, fear & ego (in any order) are unprecedented evile's primary weapons. those, along with deception & coercion, helps most of us remain (unwittingly?) dependent on its' life0cidal hired goons' agenda. most of our dwindling resources are being squandered on the 'wars', & continuation of the billionerrors stock markup FraUD/pyramid schemes. nobody ever mentions the real long term costs of those debacles in both life & any notion of prosperity for us, or our children. not to mention the abuse of the consciences of those of us who still have one, & the terminal damage to our atmosphere (see also: manufactured 'weather', hot etc...). see you on the other side of it? the lights are coming up all over now. the fairytail is winding down now. let your conscience be your guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. we now have some choices. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on your brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
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"I think the bottom line is, what kind of a world do you want to leave for your children," Andrew Smith, a professor in the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, said in a telephone interview. "How impoverished we would be if we lost 25 percent of the world's mammals," said Smith, one of more than 100 co-authors of the report. "Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live," added Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN director general. "We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives."--
"The wealth of the universe is for me. Every thing is explicable and practical for me .... I am defeated all the time; yet to victory I am born." --emerson
no need to confuse 'religion' with being a spiritual being. our soul purpose here is to care for one another. failing that, we're simply passing through (excess baggage) being distracted/consumed by the guaranteed to fail illusionary trappings of man'kind'. & recently (about 10,000 years ago) it was determined that hoarding & excess by a few, resulted in negative consequences for all.
consult with/trust in your creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?
"If
I can't be the only one here to think of strip-running or Asimov.
THL phish sticks
With this, our transformation will be complete. We will become a planet of fatties, like in Wall-E. It sounds like a joke, but really, we are getting there.
And I haven't RTFA yet, but I'd hope it addresses the issue of speed differential -- for moving walkways to work right, you have to be able to ramp up and down to speed anywhere you might wish to enter/exit. One trivial method is a turn-table -- get on near the center, with a tangential speed <2 m/s, walk out to the edge where you've got a full 10 m/s or so, and step over onto the straight walkway running at constant speed.
However, the cleanest solution, if also the most expensive, allows navigating around people who just stand there, and also allows entry/exit at any point. Just have 10 belts side-by-side, with speeds ramping in 1 m/s increments. To speed up, move left, to slow down, move right. IMO about 1 m/s differential is easily handled by people, once they get used to it, but if old folks can't deal with it, you can increase the bands arbitrarily -- just add money.
If Shelbyville is getting them, I think we should also. Damn the cost!
No.
Now move along.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For large cities an idea like this would be very neat. I live near Chicago, am not fat, and would love to be able to travel around the city on 30mph moving walkways. Ideally they would be structured like a highway with multiple lanes, one going 10mph, next one over is 20mph, fastest is 30mph.
Something like this would have maintenance costs sure, but it would also remove a huge load off public transit, and reduce taxi traffic majorly. You'd really only need a shuttle for people with large/heavy items, or elderly.
Think about how pleasant it would be if you could stroll down the street at 30mph directly toward your destination, rather than having decide which subway or bus will get you to your destination in a roundabout way (possibly even needing to change bus/trains mid-trip).
Of course this idea will never happen because of the cost and effort - but it is a lovely utopian idea.
are the best approach. Speed, exercise, reasonable distance range. The main reason I don't ride my bike in the city is the likelihood of getting creamed by traffic. Bike lanes painted on the street are of zero help with that. There are some parts of the city with a separate bike path about 4 feet wide, and that is absolutely fantastic, it just doesn't go everywhere.
http://sustainablecities.dk/en/city-projects/cases/hong-kong-re-discovering-escalators-as-public-transport
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalator
Actually, I'm with Jerry, but couldn't resist the O'Brien ref. When I catch a flight, rare these days as I can't stand flying anymore, but when I do I'm constantly annoyed by the fatties who sit with their bulk in the middle of the moving walkway forcing you to brush by them and catch some of the sweaty foulness on your clothing because you need to catch a flight while they are there to... ride the damn walkways I guess.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I could make the argument that moving sidewalks would actually encourage more total walking than would otherwise occur. You have nothing to do but walk on them. Unless they are going too fast, more opportunities to walk would be presented than would otherwise be, potentially. I won't poo-poo this just because on its face it seems stupid. (/. FAIL)
Imagine multi-block long ziplines!
Moving walkways are great in airports, where you have stuff you're carrying with you, and they are sheltered from weather.
Moving walkways outdoors, where sidewalks are supposed to be, would be a maintenance disaster; especially in a time where many states and municipalities are drowning in debt already.
Get off your ass and walk.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
And like on Futurama.
And what's the deal with the green movement? We come up with these ideas like to move huge masses, and no one looks at how its powered? The human body is designed to be very efficient at moving, and it is. Anything else will produce far more GHGs.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
When stated as an urban walkway, it's a fairly awful idea. The reduction in physical activity coupled with the amount of effort that would go into keeping these things working (people complain about road construction)! However, this could work if used on a larger scale. Moving sidewalks constructed with heavy duty materials between urban area could be powered in part by solar panels. The amount of energy savings for getting people from place to place without the use of cars would be remarkable. The entry/exit method would need some engineering, but imagine it: a train that runs on almost no energy that you can hop on any time you want. Wow.
Travel fast over short distances? Bicycle! It's what killed the dumb Seagway - which, might I remind you, had a LOT of publicity, paid and free, behind it. I don't think this new dumb idea will be a match for the tried and tested bicycle.
Especially in the nordic countries, where bicycles are so popular: practically everyone is cycling, here, from 3 year-olds (with training wheels, mostly) to 93-year olds, every one and their dog loves his/her bicycle.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Burn fossil fuels to keep America fat. Sounds like a lose-lose proposition to me.
Here's the problem with fanciful ideas like this one. They're not just impractical (the author even admits to the maintenance issues by citing escalators), they actually hurt real progress.
Personal Rapid Transit is a poster child for this kind of delay tactic. A few naive PRT supporters are true believers who actually want a system that works. Most of the politicians who support PRT are heavily funded by oil, asphalt and other such industries and are against public transportation. They use PRT and other impractical ideas to suck resources from implementing systems like streetcars, LRT, bicycle infrastructure and high-frequency bus networks that are proven to work.
It's a classic case of the (seemingly) perfect being the enemy of the good. We are in a real energy crisis and we'd best start addressing the problem by making changes we already know work!
Nobody has ever come up with a good way to manage speed transitions. Belt joints don't work too well. The clever parallelogram arrangement that starts out wide and slow and transitions to narrow and fast was too complicated. Parallel sections at different speeds haven't been tried since the Paris Exposition in 1900. The few minutes of film of that system show someone falling. There are serious problems with various kinds of shoes, ranging from spike heels to Crocs. People keep falling down on the things.
Seriously? THAT'S the real problem nowadays? It's not climate change or world hunger or war, it's how we can move people around our dense urban environments as fast as possible? Aren't we all moving fast enough already? I mean, maintenance and obesity aside, do we really as a society NEED to get everywhere that much faster? Everyone seems to need instant gratification these days. People have Facebook so they can get instant feedback from friends on when they are hanging out, Employers provide Blackberries so they can call their employees instantly so there is no where they can't be reached. People seem to want things now now now all the time. It seems pretty hard to just stop and smell the roses when you're whizzing by them at thirty miles per hour.
9 km/h 30 mph .5-.83m/s
Biking is faster, and much easier. Create large ducts for high speed travel, where even modestly powered fans can create a good tailwind, allowing bikers to easily achieve 20-30mph in them.
When walking up a hill sometimes I wish I did have a moving sidewalk. But the majority of the time it's not a big deal to walk. If someone is too fat to walk perhaps they should eat less and walk more.
I'd suggest striking a compromise: those with body-mass-index below 22 would have benefit of using universal 30 kph moving sidewalks, the rest would be mandated to walk. This would be enforced by making city centers pedestrian-only areas of at least five kilometers in radius.
Who would be hurt by that?
For large cities an idea like this would be very neat. I live near Chicago, am not fat, and would love to be able to travel around the city on 30mph moving walkways. Ideally they would be structured like a highway with multiple lanes, one going 10mph, next one over is 20mph, fastest is 30mph.
Something like this would have maintenance costs sure, but it would also remove a huge load off public transit, and reduce taxi traffic majorly. You'd really only need a shuttle for people with large/heavy items, or elderly.
Think about how pleasant it would be if you could stroll down the street at 30mph directly toward your destination, rather than having decide which subway or bus will get you to your destination in a roundabout way (possibly even needing to change bus/trains mid-trip).
Of course this idea will never happen because of the cost and effort - but it is a lovely utopian idea.
There are places to build it where it makes sense. But why not build bike lanes into these moving sidewalks? The bike on a 30mph sidewalk approaches motorcycle type speed. At this speed I can see it being very useful. I'd want to be able to get on my bike and get around uphill or on slopes.
30 mph walkways put today's tortoise-like speed ranges of .5-.83 m/s to shame.
Can't we at least get this in consistent units? For instance, "80,000 furlong per fortnight walkways put today's tortoise-like speed ranges of 3000-5000 furlongs per fortnight to shame".
And build it for bikes, not just walking. Put a location to park your bike and put cameras monitoring it for thieves, and I can see it being very useful.
How well do they stand up to the weather??
How much maintenance work is needed per year on each one?
If I'm at an airport, and have plenty of time, why should I walk on a moving walkway, only to get to the gate earlier and wait longer? So maybe I can get more crotch sweat going, and stink up the cabin more?
Seinfeld is an annoying, whining, self-congratulatory, overrated asshole.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
...after all, our butts are simply not wide enough. We've tried hard to hold down the couch, hold down our desk chair and stuff our faces, but that walk from the subway to the office was really hindering our butt-widening project. The advent of the remote control put us well on the butt-widening path but this will take us into new butt-widening levels. Now, if they could put a movable walkway between our couch or desk to the bathroom, we will be complete.
Exactly what I was thinking.
"Hear them hum!
Watch them run!
Oh, our job is never done,
For our roadways go rolling along!
While you ride,
While you glide,
We are watching down inside,
So your roadways keep rolling along!"
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Airports have plenty of moving walkways. They're also starting to put in stuff like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit
I want to get around the city on a roller coaster.
It shouldn't be a matter of walking vs driving. We can build movable bike lanes.
So we are going to pump ourselves full of food and then let machines carry us around, this reminds me of something I've seen before involving a small robot. My vote is no
I would think the major impediment to do this would not be the infrastructure or technological costs, but the potential liability issues from people falling off of it and hurting themselves throughout the city. Especially in a tiered system with a 30mph version
How would they turn, and split? The belts at airports work well enough, because there is an area of that bag that will take it forward, but that wouldn't work with us standing on them.. we would fall, surely
I don't see the need for moving sidewalks in general, as long as there actually ARE sidewalks. I hate being in places where there's only grass, dirt and ditches next to busy roads.
But I like having the moving "sidewalks" in airports when I'm carrying heavy luggage. I'd like them in train stations and bus stations too.
We are all God's parents.
The escalators in the NYC subway system are notorious for breaking down and costing a *lot* of money to maintain. In 2008 there were 169 escalators, and overall each averaged 68 repair calls a year. It is unlikely that it would be different above ground.
I'm a 2000 man.
I think it would hurt at 30 mph. Also, umbrellas would be unsafe at those speeds. Let's just skip the sidewalks and go right to the Futurama sucking tubes.
People are forgetting that in the US we don't need no stinking rules. Think of this for a second. What will happen is some people will want to walk and others just stand there. So eventually you get to a place where the walkway is blocked and you have people lined up behind them. When you get to the deceleration stage in effect the walkway contracts so there is less room per person. If people are already standing very close than they will rear end each other.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I would love to see what happens after a dog dumps his load near one of the conveyor junctions!
Go to your local big airport. See how many of their moving-sidewalks are down at any given moment either because they are broken or because some smartass hit the big red "stop" button. Now do the same at your local escalator-equipped department store.
When an escalator or moving sidewalk is shut down, an inspector (usually fire department personnel, i.e. a fire marshal) has to give their blessing before the escalator can be started again. Law, at least in California.
And let's not even start on vandalism and the lawsuit burden that would follow.
Huge construction expense, huge ongoing expense (including energy, maintenance, inspections, legal issues, etc.), significant downtime, little benefit, noisy, disruptive during construction, disruptive during operation (how are we supposed to cross these things?)... yeah. Where do we sign up?
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Should Cities Install Moving Sidewalks?
Absolutely!
Three reasons:
[1] People are not lazy enough.
[2] States, counties and cities need *something* to do with all that excess revenue just lying around taking up space.
[3] Profit!
Go for it, futuristas!
1) How do we pay for it? Pay as you go? Must we now pay for using the sidewalk to go down the street?
2) Be prepared for lawsuits, as a few manage to misuse the moving sidewalks, and get hurt. Of course, that will the fault of the city involved.
Imagine playing on one of these while wearing roller skates.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
what a dumb proposition. period.
Simple solution - for all you health nuts that are complaining about obesity...just run on the thing backwards.
There, fixed that for ya.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
I can cover 1 km pretty quickly, but then I'm far from being one of the 30%+ of obese Americans ...
This sounds like a perfect government project - make people unhealthy, solve a problem that doesn't need a solution, and do it all by milking the tax payers for billions of dollars to funnel to unions and cronies.
30mph = 13.4 m/s = 44 fps .83 m/s = 2.7 fps
1.8mph =
It's about a 16:1 ratio whichever way you slice it.
Cities can't even afford to keep themselves clean, educate their inhabitants, provide adequate police and fire fighters, or maintain their existing poorly designed transit systems. Add to that that the average American could use MORE exercise, not less and the answer wouldn't just be "no", it would be "don't be ridiculous"
It's close to the stupidest idea I've heard in a while.
Cities could simply mandate that the only cars allowed on their streets during business hours are sub-compact all electric cars. And electric cabs. They could make the pedestrian and bike routes safer and better. And make the rail or electric bus routes into city center and looping the major shopping and working areas better.
Moving sidewalks is beyond stupid.
Visit Washington, D.C. sometime and use the Metro. It's customary to stand on the right, and it's very irritating to locals when you don't. I usually ask people to move out of the way if they're on the left.
Summer's a pain, though, because of the floods of tourists... no point in asking one to move, because there are about 20 more above them.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
In Tokyo,people get around the city at 10-30 km/hr using a high technology called the bicycle. Slower speeds are managed using devices called legs. Works great, and people here don't seem to be as, um, big boned as Americans.
Where there are escalators and moving walkways, standing people are no problem because they stand to the left and it's easy to walk past them. It's called manners people.
...they will all move at the same speed. 10 miles per hour.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
are the best approach. Speed, exercise, reasonable distance range. The main reason I don't ride my bike in the city is the likelihood of getting creamed by traffic. Bike lanes painted on the street are of zero help with that. There are some parts of the city with a separate bike path about 4 feet wide, and that is absolutely fantastic, it just doesn't go everywhere.
But you still get creamed at intersections. The advantage from the planners perspective is that bikes lose right of way at intersections so the statistics look better.
Fewer car vs bike crashes but more bike vs car and bike vs pedestrian. Those nasty bike riders!
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Hear them hum!
Watch them run!
Oh, our job is never done,
For our roadways go rolling along!
While you ride;
While you glide;
We are watching 'down inside',
So your roadways keep rolling along!
"Oh, it's Hie! Hie! Hee!
The rotor men are we-
Check off the sectors loud and strong!
One! Two! Three!
Anywhere you go
You are bound to know
That your roadways are rolling along!
KEEP THEM ROLLING!
That your roadways are rolling along!
http://pinopsida.com
I used a few of these while traveling in Japan and these were quite useful. Especially as a tourist I was mainly going from one place to another and that included quite a lot of walking and then covering some distance on these was quite a breeze. I don't see these that much different from escalators that provide you either with ease of travel by generally not forcing to go with the slowest people on the stairs if you don't want to, as people stand on one side of the escalator and leave other side of the escalator free for the more hasty people to speed up their traveling speed.
Skaters would have a good time using moving sidewalks! Probably hit like 50mph coming off those things.
Namaste
Hey Submitter,
km/h, km, mph, m/s.
Please at least attempt to keep to the same units when posting a story. I can do the mental arithmetic fine in converting between them, but it interrupts my train of thought when I come across some mish-mash of units and have to go, "Well, yes, 0.9 m/s *is* slower than 9km/h and 30mph is faster than them both, but by how much exactly? Lessee, 10mph is 16km/hr, times 3, gives 48km/h, which means 9km/h is about 5 times slower and 0.9 m/s is about 3.5km/h which is about 15 times slower than 48km/h. Huh."
So, it would same a lot of time - and really help in your readers ability to quickly comprehend your story - if you could just stick to one set of units next time, be it km/h, m/s, mph or furlongs per fortnight.
Thanks.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
They can travel fast over long distances with the TGV (high-speed train) or airplanes, but not over short distances (under 1 km).
It's called a bike. Learn how to use it, FFS!
And to preemptively counter the usual complaints...
Sweat -- The best way to drastically reduce sweat-drenched clothes is not to wear a backpack or shoulder bag but use dedicated bike bags that are attached to the bike rack. Also, if you're breaking into a heavy sweat after 1 km (a casual 4 minute ride), you should ride your bike more often to get rid of that excessive weight.
Safety -- again, the article talks about an urban environment and distances under 1km. Unless you live in Gaza you should be able to find a safe and quick route.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
I'm guessing the poor folks typical drug of choice is beer.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Don't you need Douglas-Martin sunpower screens to power the thing
Great...now, when I've finally found a restaurant that doesn't put outside seating in the parking lot, they install moving walkways to the door instead. Why can't I eat outside under a nice tree?
For those who don't live in NYC, there's a shuttle train with three tracks that goes from Times Square (42nd and 7th) to Grand Central (42nd and Park/4th), which is about 1/2 of a mile/1 km. The shuttle doesn't connect quickly to any other train, and they run about every 3 minutes during rush hour and take 2 minutes. It would take less than 15 minutes to walk that distance. Instead, they should replace those tracks with moving walkways. Instead of taking 5 minutes (or more off-peak) and the cost of running subways, paying conductors, etc., it could take 7 minutes, have a lot higher capacity, and a lot lower cost. Win-win.
I'm a member of the UTU(United Transportation Union)!
Have gnu, will travel.
I could swear they are already moving.
Now were did I put my car keys?
Have gnu, will travel.
First, I think the idea was to replace that 3-lane highway.
But the "so what" is for this part:
One person trips, next thing you know you have a pile of bodies and all injured.
Same things happen in cars. Or are cars inherently easier to control than our own bodies?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Why don't you spell it out in great gross furlongs per fortnight for the arithmetically challenged?
The Roads Must Roll!
Bring back sedan chairs. Fat lazy people can pay poor people to carry them, just like they have for millennia. For awhile there it appeared with a strong middle class as though we were moving towards less socio-economic inequality, greater overall prosperity, and the kind of society where futuristic shit like moving sidewalks might not seem out of place. But now that sounds like an extravagance. There are plenty of people who need the work, so bring back the sedan chairs and just embrace the fact that we're moving backwards as a society.
Ya Americans need something else to make life easier and keep them fat. Heaven forbid having to walk some where. Wile we are at it stairs should be out lawed and escalators should be mandatory in all houses. I also think we should add snickers bars to salads.
Well, at least they have city-wide monorails in all the cities with maglevs connecting city-to-city, right?????
You mean they still don't have even that??? Jesus H. on a Harley?!?!?!?
Well, at least Heinlein put them in a number of his books, Tunnel in the Sky, that Roads Must Roll, This Far Horizon, and several others.
Timothy - I expect better. For those wondering (and without the metric/imperial conversion memorized): 30 mph is ~ 13.4 m/s.
Wasn't this an idea George Costansa had?
1. Spread the rumor that repeated power cycling prolongs the lightbulb life
2. ???
3. Profit!
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
IT'S NOT THAT FAR. PUMP THEM LEGS.
Try telling that to Gus, you insensitive clod.
Brilliant! They've found a way to contribute to pollution, global warming, and probably use even more fossil fuels, instead of having people WALK!
" If they have moving sidewalks in the future, when you get on them, I think you should have to assume sort of a walking shape so as not to frighten the dogs. "
Between walking and biking, what else do we need?
This seems like an even bigger and less efficient version of the Segway, another solution in search of a problem.
more moving people. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTzMeDiv-7U
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
Something in the realm of fantasy is much better than something that has to operate with the physical and financial constraints of the real world?
No shit, Sherlock!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
To those remaining few who are not obese yet...
but they should install piezoelectric sidewalks and crosswalks.
Srsly!
If only we could have the moving sidewalks (pavements) as described in the The City And The Stars by Charles C Clarke where the edges of the moving pavement are slower than the centre and to take junctions you just step across the moving sidewalk where it splits in two. Folks transiting through keep to the high speed middle
To get up to 30mph, you're going to need a succession of moving surfaces to ramp up the person's speed in steps, then ramp it down at the far end. And once you're on the thing, there's no getting off until you get to where it's taking you. So it might see very niche uses. Like connecting a sports stadium to a nearby mass-transit station. Or in large airports, in which they're actually already widely used.
If you submit a story, at least put minimal effort into it. Sure, there will be a few people who can compare mph with m/s, but the other 99.9999% of the human population can't. Even better, using mph & m/s, the m stands for mile and meter with nothing discerning them but common use.
30 mph = 13.4112 meters / second
Of course, Slashdot is not helping with its submission process. Either, it gets accepted or not. No "hey, fix this and we will publish it" or anything. The "fix your own crap before we accept it" system works wonderfully in FLOSS, why should Slashdot do it differently?
Here we are, ridiculing the rest of the world's population, especially the US of A, of becoming more and more idiotic all the time, but can't put the tiniest effort into anything. Oh, and any submissions that don't use metric should simply be denied.
Rant over; it's save to re-enter the building.
No.
Next question ?
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Since when does 30 meters per hour trump .5-.83 miles per second?
I picture a bevy of lawyers licking their chops for this one! my grandmother, god rest her long deceased soul, couldnt even get on a escalator after her stroke. do we REALLY want a whole bunch of these people taking a 'spin' because they hung one foot on the ground-conveyor-belt?
Really, it's OK. We'll just get us some of that Obama money from his stash I keep hearing about.
Then we can convert EVERY sidewalk to a moving sidewalk FOR FREE.
After all, if it's from his stash, we never have to pay for it. Problem solved, when can we start?
While we are at it... what about using this for intercity travel? We could make... the Louis and Clark moving trail... it could go through the exact places they went, and take half the time to do it...
Put Goatse on one end, and Natalie Portman on the other.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
This has the potential to make watching drunks come out of bars onto the sidewalk even more entertaining.
Well thanks for pointing that out. I'm sure it'll avoid any confusion for people arriving at Heathrow from countries that drive on the wrong side of the road.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I think cities should install moving highway. I always believe a moving highway is always going to be more energy efficient than thousands of moving cars.
Our health issues are bad enough. Walk, run or ride (a bike)... ya lazy b@$t@rd! ~:-)B
I thought similarly to this, but what would happen when winter hits, not only Chicago, but anywhere in the Northeast as well? Traffic would simply ramp back up, probably be jammed moreso than before, and snow removal would become an even larger problem because they have to make room for these automated paths somehow.
I've read that it was in place with a newspapers. A feew weeks later, i have the chance to try it. To my taste, it was not fast enough, obviously, i have the Asimov stories in head ^^
It is easy if you follow the instructions, but a bit strange.
To accelerate, you have some wheels on the floor. You have to step in this zone (better if you know to rollerblading).
The rubber band for hand grabing is compose of stretching part and "handle part" beetween, rigid plates where you can put your hand on.
Once still, you catch an handle, it pulls you on the small wheel zone (know you know why knowing rollerblading is good) until you reach the 9km/h speed, and you land on the floor rubber band.
During the acceleration part, the handles space away.
During the travel, you are on a normal sidewalks, you can walk, be on one feet only. It's seems just a bist faster.
The arrival is quite the opposite, your feet "land" on the wheel zone, the handle slows you and you step out at the end.
It was a totally "undramatic" experience, but i admit that you are able to fall easily if you are not following strictly* the instructions (depending on your equilibrium ability)
If fact, i did not have the time to take it again neither a new occasion, otherwise, i would have done some dumb thing as running, jump on the wheel to have the good speed to land on the sidewalks without the handle, do the same at the arrival, just to try something else than the "normal way" ^^
i'm sure some """youngs""" will have a lot of more silly ideas like this.
Moving sidewalks are like flying cars, a staple of futurism that doesn't really work out so well. (Yes, I know about the Terrafugia. That's not a flying car in the traditional sense. People think Blade Runner when they think flying cars, they think Back to the Future. VTOL from your driveway to someone else's driveway.)
Really, a moving sidewalk is like mass transit, requires a certain density to be feasible. You only usually see that in airports. Just like it's unimaginable to run a subway out to my suburb neighborhood, it's unimaginable to bring a moving sidewalk out there, too.
There's also the practical concern of getting people up to speed. I'm always worried about falling on my face with those airport sidewalks.
If we really want to put some transit options in our cities, I like the personal rapid transit systems people are working on. The idea is to use really light monorails with two passenger cars. The lines only need a telephone pole sized pole and are quiet to run. You could route the line along a highway, out over a field, across a parking lot, zero impact on the space below. It would be computer-controlled so that you could lay out a grid of these lines and get good coverage in a dispersed area, one that wouldn't support conventional mass transit. And you also don't have the headache of starting and stopping a whole train at every stop.
The goal with these systems wouldn't be to completely replace cars but take the single user commuter vehicle off the road. You can still have your car for home for a trip to the store, rent a truck to deliver something bulky, but all the trips that are just one or two people going somewhere could be via one of these monorails. Would also cut down on the tremendous amount of wasted space devoted to parking lots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTran
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
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Reality check time: who pays to not merely install them, but also for regular maintenance and parts? Quick, what are the budgets on your local public transit, and how well are the vehicles maintained? (Don't get me started about here in Washington, DC....)
And let's not forget: where have you seen moving ways exposed to the weather? Were you figuring in complete weather coverage, including blowing snow and rain?
mark "only where there's perfect weather control, like the old pulp covers...."
Ever think that maybe some people are not in a hurry to get somewhere.
The link says it has limitations and shortcomings. Everything has limitations and shortcomings. It's a bit of a stretch from that to being useless.