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10 Mph Moving Sidewalks Could Make Crosstown Buses Obsolete
- finid 10y agoSounds like a good idea. Wonder what the maintenance costs would be.
- astrodust 10y agoHint: Way more than a bus.
- gshubert17 10y agoRobert A. Heinlein wrote a short story in 1940, "The Roads Must Roll", featuring long-distance, high-speed moving roads, not just sidewalks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll
- i80and 10y agoAn idea not entirely unlike this was also used in Isaac Asimov's "The Caves of Steel".
- guard-of-terra 10y agoAnd the entirety of Strugatskies' XXII Century Noon.
- glenra 10y agoRight, and Heinlein's solution to "whizzing past the bakery" was that there would be food service traveling along the road with you. In NYC, maybe very skinny food carts?
- stevenwadejr 10y agoCostanza was ahead of his time.
- tromp 10y agoJERRY: The only thing I can think of is I told her we should have those moving walkways all over the city. GEORGE: Like at the airport? (getting excited) JERRY: Yeah. GEORGE: That's a great idea!!! JERRY: Tell me about it! GEORGE: We could be zipping all over the place. JERRY: They could at least try it. GEORGE: They never try anything. JERRY: What's the harm? GEORGE: No harm!
- ironyguard 10y agoGreat idea. Much more power efficient than bus. And roads require maintenance when its raining, freezing or snowing. This thing will just work.
- brianwawok 10y agoA moving sidewalk will just work in the ice and snow? Is that sarcasm?
- astrodust 10y agoI'm sure it will be totally fine being iced over, being inundated with salt, and will never, ever have any problems with a car being parked on it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- saghm 10y agoPersonally, I prefer to be inside a vehicle rather than outside when there's precipitation
- astrodust 10y agoThis entire idea is so batshit insane that anyone thinking it's a good idea really needs to recalibrate their sense of practicality.
- gurneyHaleck 10y agoAnd that's because buses are THE WORST form of transportation imaginable. Anything is better than a bus. Buses have never been the opposite of obsolete. They were always a step backwards. Trolleys with dedicated lanes make sense. When travelling distances of less than 30 miles, buses are for people who hate themselves.
- MK999 10y agoDon't blame the bus, blame the system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransMilenio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransMilenio
- trevyn 10y agoBRT doesn't fix the ride-quality issue.
- ant6n 10y agoA trolley is a bus with an overhead electricity supply.
- gurneyHaleck 10y agoStreetcars can operate on rails too, and thus are not implicitly buses. There is evidence of this still embedded in the pavement of cities which have, or used to have, above-ground trolley systems.
- ant6n 10y agoStreetcars are generally not called trolleys - unless they are heritage streetcars using trolley poles, generally only in the States. Modern streetcars or trams use pantographs.
- gkya 10y agoYou're probably American, I've learnt from HN that you have a sub par bus network there. I live in Istanbul and find buses quite pleasing. Your city design and your public transportation system are to blame.
- rebootthesystem 10y agoDoesn't pass physics or business tests. Yeah, bat-shit-crazy fits this. But, hey, NY Mag needed to fill some much needed space to generate clicks. Mission accomplished.
- glenra 10y agoWhat's wrong with the physics?
- rebootthesystem 10y agoThis term is a generic concept that has to do with the idea that it just doesn't make sense at a very basic level. No need to get into advanced scientific analysis to figure this out, the "physics" of the thing makes no sense without having to do a single calculation. For example, compare these two options: Option 1: Take 10 or 20 bus routes. Each being 5 to 10 miles long. Convert all buses to electric power. Option 2: Take the same routes. Rip-up 200 miles of sidewalk (yeah, they'll be some overlap, this is just a quick mental exercise). Develop new technology. Install 400 miles of it (you need two directions of travel). Staff for installation, support, etc. The first passes "physics" in that asking "does it make sense given all we know?" test results in a pretty quick "yes!". The second is such an obscene deviation from what would make sense from almost any perspective that it is surprising anyone would consider discussing it at all. Take, for example, having 400 miles of active sidewalks. You just replaced a few buses with 400 miles of sidewalk moving most of the time. Why would anyone wait if the sidewalk is right there. Whereas before people would wait a few minutes for a ride now you are going to have dozens of miles of expensive power-consuming active sidewalks moving all the time simply to carry a single person 100 meters to then have them cross the street and get on the next active sidewalk. And, if it snows, now you are carrying tons of snow until you devote a small army of trucks to go clean the snow. I mean, the more you think about the reality of this utopic concept the stupider it sounds. It'd probably make far more sense to have a small fleet of electric scooters available for rent and use only along a predetermined route. If you get off that route they turn off. So now, you'd have small one or two person clean scooters distributed along a 5 to 10 mile route for anyone to hop on and off as needed. At most you might have to walk a block or two to get one. This isn't an idea that I thought through. I'm just pulling it out of a hat to illustrate that the "physics" of this off-the-cuff concept would make far more sense than ripping-up hundreds of miles of sidewalk to install a monster of a system that makes less than zero sense. The "does it pass physics" test refers to stuff that just doesn't make sense. Like a miracle, or the earth being 6,000 years old, or buying a supercomputer to do basic math or commuting in a Humvee. In other words, there are things that defy reasonable reality to such an extent that they simply don't make sense.
- hourislate 10y agoI visit Toronto quite often. They have a moving sidewalk (conveyor system) in Terminal 3 when you arrive and disembark from your plane. The video of the moving sidewalk they link looks to be the one I'm referring to and if you look at the date it's from 2009. That's probably the last year it was in operation. In the last 2-3 years (and I'm there at least once a month) the moving sidewalks have maintenance signs on them and have never worked. As a matter of fact I put a small sticker on the belt/handrail and it hasn't moved guaranteed in about a year. It makes the walk to Customs and Immigration quite the haul. It could be that they have disabled them permanently so people don't get to the customs/immigration area to quickly and overwhelm an already overwhelmed system. Don't know....
- Pixeleen 10y agoThe moving walkway pictured in the article is the same one, and it worked two years ago. It was a rush to glide past even the regular moving walkways. A futuristic treat after a long flight and grouchy border guards.
- geoka9 10y agoThe Amsterdam Airport has them all over the place and they always seem to work.Considering the distances involved, they are very convenient.
- Tade0 10y agoWaaaay too many moving parts if you ask me. I have an alternative idea: Electric monowheels(or kick scooters): -Not fixed-route. -Barely any maintenance. -Even the non-exploding ones cost as much as (subsidized) public transport over their lifetime. -Same speed as this moving sidewalk and bicycles - could potentially share the bike lanes with the latter. Two major disadvantages though are weight and usability in bad weather. I guess nothing beats cars when it comes to comfort of traveling.
- m_eiman 10y agoIt's called a Segway.
- derefr 10y agoWhy is being fixed-route a bad thing? When you already have city-scale capacity-planning data saying that 100k people make a particular trip on a particular route daily, building fixed infrastructure to accommodate that route usually ends up with a much lower TCO than the equivalent mobile infrastructure. A subway train costs less in maintenance, fuel, and road-congestion than the equivalent number of busses, to serve the same load on the same route. Mobile infrastructure only gains an advantage where the load on a route isn't enough to pay back the capital costs of fixed infrastructure (e.g. busses out to a depopulated exurb.)
- fsloth 10y agoBuses and trams and subways are fixed route. Also, they are dependable. Sometimes foolproof and simple is better than infinitely flexible.
- enf 10y agoThere actually is a sidewalk conveyor belt (and some sidewalk escalators) in operation in Bilbao. I'm not sure how much of a maintenance headache it is in practice, but it does make a hilly neighborhood more easily accessible. https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/18345027333/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/18345027333/
- wazoox 10y agoThere was a fast (10 kph) moving sidewalk in the Paris metro station "Montparnasse" for 12 years or so. It never worked out. You can't easily step on it; for years they had to have employees helping people stepping on the fast lane without falling down. And the thing broke down all the time, it was barely available half the time. Finally they replaced it with a good old fashioned 4 kph moving sidewalk. Faster isn't always better. Moving faster is overrated.
- shawkinaw 10y agoThis article is about a walkway that moves slower at the ends, like a ski lift.
- wazoox 10y agoThe Paris metro one was slower at the ends. The ends were made of gradually faster rolls, so you had to let your feet flat on the ground and dont try to walk until on the main, faster part of the sidewalk. Trying to walk on the gradually accelerating parts was a sure way to fall.
- CydeWeys 10y agoThey've solved the boarding/debarking issue by having variable speeds, but maintenance still seems like it's going to be a huge problem. Escalators/moving walkways are always having maintenance problems. It's a simple result of how many moving parts and rubbing surfaces are involved. Think of a car moving on a road -- you've got four tires and two spinning axles. You can easily go many tens of thousands of kilometers without needing any servicing, and when you do finally need servicing, it's just a quick tire replacement. Fixing walkways/escalators isn't nearly so simple, and if there's any problem, it takes down the entire span.
- masklinn 10y agoI wouldn't say that moving faster is overrate, but folks can't go from 0 to 10 in an instant, and partial variable speed is an absolute engineering and maintenance nightmare.
- digi_owl 10y agoTrams anyone?
- rubyfan 10y agoIn related news, Teleportation Could Make Airplanes Obsolete if only physicists can figure out how to transmit and re-assemble humans correctly.
- mikeash 10y agoNobody knows how to build a teleporter, whereas moving sidewalks are pretty mundane technology by now.
- gumby 10y agoNot outdoors!
- fsloth 10y agoMoving sidewalks are like electric cars - the fact that they are used or not is not about basic infeasabilities of engineering (although there is development needed) but of politics. A moving sidewalk seems much more plausible and practical than a hyperloop in improving transportation.
- afarrell 10y agoI wish Boston would put one (or a 4mph one) underground walking path between Bowdoin station and MGH so that people could easily transfer without having to either clog the green line or cross traffic in the rain/snow.
- Prodigal_Moon 10y agoHa, I was sitting here looking on Cambridge St. and thinking the exact same thing.
- massysett 10y agoThe DC Metro talked about putting tunnels between some close downtown stations so people could walk rather than take trains for close transfers. For now, they have programmed the electronic fare system so that if you walk between the stations on the street you don't pay twice.
- rmason 10y agoI don't really want to be on a moving sidewalk when its ten below zero fahrenheit and snowing - but hey that's just me. But if they could enclose them in a glass or plastic dome it would be far more preferable than riding the bus.
- massysett 10y agoThe problem with the bus is you have to wait for it outside, when it's ten below and snowing. The sidewalk would run continuously.
- buzzybee 10y agoThis has been proposed many times. Here is one plan from 1937 that would have been located where the Market Street BART tunnel is now: http://blog.sfgate.com/thebigevent/2015/07/10/35-years-before-bart-a-subway-and-moving-sidewalk-on-market-st/ http://blog.sfgate.com/thebigevent/2015/07/10/35-years-befor...
- internaut 10y agoThe future used to be much more interesting. Check out Whale Bus: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/France_in_XXI_Century._Whale_bus.jpg/800px-France_in_XXI_Century._Whale_bus.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Fr...
- machinshin_ 10y agoLouis Wu would approve
- Animats 10y agoThe Thyssen-Krupp walkway at the Toronto airport is only 7.2 KPH (4.5MPH) in the middle, fast section.[1] Wikipedia claims it's usually broken. The Paris Montparnesse 9 KPH moving sidewalk had too many falls, was slowed down, and later removed. The "10 MPH moving sidewalk" is a discussion item in a paper, not a working system. This is a tough mechanical problem, with no really good solutions. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4UF6LQKMps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4UF6LQKMps
- mtimjones 10y agoWhatever happened to walking?
- stereo 10y agoI have an idea: bicycles.