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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.'"
Wouldn't it be a better idea for people to walk those short distances, given how fat people are these days?
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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?
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.
30 mph = ~13 m/s
I'll take the faster one, even if it is expressed in silly units.
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.
[ irc.p2p-network.net -> #zomgwtfbbq ][ http://zomgwtfbbq.info ]
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.
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.
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".'
0.83m/s (meters per second) would be about 9,612 feet per hour, and a mile is 5,280 feet.
So it's 9612 / 5280 = 1.82 miles per hour, or about 2 mph.
The speed of an average human walking.
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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)
Multiply m/s by 2 to get a rough idea of mph. You're still 12% out but you can get an idea of whether speeds are similar.
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.
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.
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.
The Segway would have been a good idea at 1/10 the cost. And it would have been a lot cheaper if Kamen hadn't insisted on 2 wheels instead of 3. Personally, I think he really wanted to build a 2 wheeled electric wheel chair, and conned the investors into paying the development costs of a personal transportation device with the same technology.
In Nordic countries they can only use bicycles half the year. I hear they do a lot of skiing and skating too. I was most impressed with Amsterdam, where you can actually get anywhere you want to go by bicycle.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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".
Not if they walk while on the moving sidewalks. The idea here is to replace cars, not the walk to the mailbox.
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?
You seem lost. Here, let me help you:
http://digg.com/
...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."
Wait, I gotta correct myself: you must traverse 1 km quickly? How about just fucking run? Or are people so infatuated with their lard, their coronaries and poor erectile performance?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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 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.
Sorry, but the Segway would have been a dumb idea at any price: slower than a bicycle, but much more dangerous on the sidewalk, because it's so much wider. Cannot be used on the road because it's so freaking slow. MUCH slower than a moped, and still wider. When you use it you do no physical activity, but you still have to stand, hence loading your knees.
Cycling in nordinc countries: it's true that most people cycle only during the 7 months from April till October, but many opt to continue commuting also in the winter, using studded tires and appropriate clothing. A lot of people switch to cross-country skiing, though they cannot commute (usually) all the way to their workplaces like they do with bicycles. And yes, there is a ton of bicycle paths in the Nordic countries - nice, segregated ones, at that. And yes, Amsterdam is amazing in that you can really reach any place without getting your ass off the bicycle. Copenhagen, believe it or not, is even better in this regard.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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.
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.
Which helps to explain another phenomenon about the Netherlands and the Nordic countries -- the only obese people you see are tourists.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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!
The problem is getting onto, or off of, really fast-moving sidewalks. One person trips, next thing you know you have a pile of bodies and all injured.
Want to set up a sequence of them that all are separated by even 5 mph difference (and that's plenty fast)? Good luck managing it. That's as wide as a 3-lane highway.
Got someone trying to carry groceries, or a couple bags? Whoops, even more trouble balancing. Here we go again...
It fell apart the moment people even started imagining the basic problems with people trying to use it on a larger scale. Hell, look at Asimov's discussion of the topic (The Caves of Steel) talking about the immense problems that happened when someone tripped and fell onto the strips.
Well yes: while obesity is raising in most of the world (especially in China), and is a well-established scourge in the USA, it's a non-issue over here. I have to think real hard if I want to remember seeing anyone obese this whole day. I guess the lab manager at this other department (will be omitted to protect the innocent) is a bit overweight, but still would definitely pass for medium-to-plumper in the USA :D
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Did you remember to stick your thumb up your ass? You can't get first post unless you have your thumb up your ass. Try it, you'll see.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
What we need is some people who think outside the box to help manifest synergies and shift paradigms, only then will moving sidewalks materialize. Now where is my ornothopter?
Imagine playing on one of these while wearing roller skates.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Heck, here in the northeast we can only use them half a year. Even then at great risk to ourselves since drivers seem to at best ignore you at worst try to kill you.
Wow. The level of depressing buzzword reliance just hurt my brain.
Remember: every time humanity comes up with an idiot-proof contraption, nature designs a better idiot.
what a dumb proposition. period.
Want to set up a sequence of them that all are separated by even 5 mph difference (and that's plenty fast)? Good luck managing it. That's as wide as a 3-lane highway.
Good. We'll have plenty of space if we get rid of the freaking roads.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Troll? Hahaha, I guess a burned Segway investor? Or just some dude highly dedicated to grooming his deposits of lard. It's OK man, just keep those calories coming - I bet your life is lots of fun!
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Here you go. I think you'll find the cost quite manageable.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
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.
In Nordic countries they can only use bicycles half the year. I hear they do a lot of skiing and skating too. I was most impressed with Amsterdam, where you can actually get anywhere you want to go by bicycle.
Some people here in northern sweden bike the whole year. You just have to get one or two studded bike tires, and some long johns(wind chill).
It's also possible to use kicksleds in the winters. In some places only half the sidewalks is sanded just to allow kicksleds.
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.
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
...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
That's the attraction. It's crude humor to be sure, but it's sure be entertaining.
But your walkway has to run flat chat all the time and it is using energy which could be used elsewhere. Rail transport OTH can adjust capacity to demand.
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
Because other people have connections to make. If you cannot walk without sweating you need more exercise fatty.
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.
Consider the difference between running 100km of moving walkway at 100km/h and OTH running one train at 100km/h over 100km. The train will use a lot less power because you only have to drive a dozen or so wheels and the moving mass is smaller, so drag is limited. If you set up PV cells along your transport corridor then excess power could go into the grid, using money. A system with close to 100% load factor along the transport corridor would justify moving walkways. We see that in airports. Not between cities.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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!
The Roads Must Roll!
Even more apropos to this subject is Heinlein's The Roads Must Roll.
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.
The problem is getting onto, or off of, really fast-moving sidewalks. One person trips, next thing you know you have a pile of bodies and all injured.
Want to set up a sequence of them that all are separated by even 5 mph difference (and that's plenty fast)? Good luck managing it. That's as wide as a 3-lane highway.
Got someone trying to carry groceries, or a couple bags? Whoops, even more trouble balancing. Here we go again...
It fell apart the moment people even started imagining the basic problems with people trying to use it on a larger scale. Hell, look at Asimov's discussion of the topic (The Caves of Steel) talking about the immense problems that happened when someone tripped and fell onto the strips.
Actually, the cooler high-speed moving walkways in use today expand to the sides and contract again to create low- and high-speed areas. It's the same concept as a river being fast through narrow regions and slow when it widens out.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
IT'S NOT THAT FAR. PUMP THEM LEGS.
Try telling that to Gus, you insensitive clod.
Remember: every time humanity comes up with an idiot-proof contraption, nature designs a better idiot.
Of course, what you meant to say was that every time humanity, moving forward, implements a new strategic initiative with a long term strategy focus towards the develeopment of an idiot-proof contraption ...
try and bicycle in a business suit.
Did that a number of times.
idiot.
Usually people use their nicknames when signing their posts.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
" 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!
Urza was a genius.
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.
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?
Right... and the idea in Wall-E was to give disabled people a way to get around. However, when a technological solution becomes more convenient than the natural alternative, the technological solution will become the status quo, no matter what the original intention.
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.
about 2 mph. The speed of an average human walking.
On their hands, maybe. Otherwise, normal walking pace is about 16 min/mile, so close to 4 mph
"You can't allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them." [Condoleezza Rice]
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 ride a bike to work, year-round, in sunny Buffalo. Winters aren't bad, just dress appropriately for the temperature and get some studded tires for traction.
--saint
More like the speed of a 5 year old walking.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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
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...."