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Rue de l'Avenir
- nvalis 3y agoI love the concept of moving walkways on large airports and always wondered why there are non with multiple speeds like this one. Is it a security aspect? There is however an accelerating one at YYZ in Toronto [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway#ThyssenKrupp_ACCEL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway#ThyssenKrupp_AC...
- hinkley 3y agoAccelerating escalators are both fascinating and absolutely terrifying to me.
- a-priori 3y agoI've walked on the ones at Toronto Pearson before. I was a bit surprised the first time that it wasn't moving at full speed like I expected when I stepped on, but after that the second time I knew what to expect and it worked well. I actually found it better when disembarking because it gives a better transition to the stationary surface when stepping off.
- croisillon 3y agothere used to be a quicker (9 or 11 km/h depending on sources) walkway in Paris metro, but apparently too frequently broken https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trottoir_roulant_rapide https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trottoir_roulant_rapide
- P-Nuts 3y ago« Le TRR fonctionna d'abord à la vitesse de 11 km/h (3 m/s), mais en raison de fréquentes chutes de voyageurs et de divers accidents, la vitesse fut réduite à 9 km/h (2,5 m/s) » From your Wikipedia page, it says it initially went at 11 km/h but was reduced to 9 km/h because of “frequent falls of passengers and various accidents”.
- renewiltord 3y agoMy dude, that is the coolest thing I have seen. The engineering and design required to make it reliable and safe. Thank you for sharing.
- ink_13 3y agoAlas, those have been drywalled over and closed for good at YYZ. A real bummer, especially since it seems I have to traverse those passageways every time I return from the US or Europe.
- hinkley 3y agoAnybody here go through the DFW airport about 20 years ago? That airport has had moving walkways for 30+ years that I’m aware of. In 200X, there was an IR sensor at the end of each walkway that would trigger a male voiceover warning about the end of the “moving walk”. There was a Starbucks in one of the terminals, right at a dogleg where a section of the walk ended. I had to listen to that announcement fifty to 100 times in a dozen or so minutes, and between recording, playback, and audio compression quality, my partner and I both swore he was saying “the wooing walk”. Like a ventriloquist trying to not get caught subbing out consonants - and failing. The Wooing/Mooing Walk was a running joke the rest of our relationship.
- satvikpendem 3y agoDon't most large airports have moving walkways? I've seen them quite plentiful abroad.
- hinkley 3y agoHubs for sure, and for quite some time. The ones in DFW in ‘94 seemed to have been there for some time. The inclined ones in Charles de Gaul are just bizarre. All I recall from the first hub I remember, Denver (85?) was the water stains on the ceiling tiles. I feel like moving walks would have been novel to me but I have no memory of them.
- mherdeg 3y agoHeinlein's "The Roads Must Roll" posits a network of very fast, very long moving walkways which could be used for mass transit (you'd ramp up speed on slower ones then hop over to a fast one). Wikipedia says that moving walkways had been in sf for decades by that point, but Heinlein also almost incidentally invents the Segway in the story -- just a little treat. I love peoplemovers (like the Hong Kong Central-Mid Level escalators and the delightfully bouncy SFO walkways) and always wondered what would have to be different for us to get super-fast ones for transit. In Boston, IMO they would be at least as good as the Green Line :)
- mauvehaus 3y ago> In Boston, IMO they would be at least as good as the Green Line :) Yeah, but the E line down South Huntington would be downright perilous :-D
- mpsprd 3y agoAsimov introduced me to this concept in I robot. In his version there were multiple levels of speed for entry/exit of transit so the main highways were going really fast. IIRC it required some dexterity to use and sounded a bit dangerous...
- bee_rider 3y agoAs long as there aren’t any gaps, I guess it is just the difference in the belt speeds that you care about. Also the wind.
- dev_slash_null 3y agoYou also have to consider what happens if a 60mph belt breaks/halts while people are on it.
- user982 3y agoAre you sure it wasn't The Caves of Steel?
- leto_ii 3y agoAmazing feat. Yet it's not the first time that I've also felt bitterness pondering such past achievements. I can't escape the feeling that we used to be so much bolder and unconstrained in setting goals for ourselves and actually pursuing them. I feel like 1900 people would have fixed global warming, unaffordable housing, universal healthcare etc.
- pasquinelli 3y agoi drive on the interstate highway system way more than i like, and i'm often struck with the thought that, if we didn't have our interstate highway system now, we wouldn't build one.
- jrmg 3y agoRail network too. We should have high speed rail all over the country - instead, witness e.g. the molasses-speed design and construction of the California High Speed Rail project.
- pixl97 3y agoPeople in 1900 effectively had two world wars that lead to a massive number of deaths, thinking it was some golden age of unlimited accomplishment without terrible costs would be a mistake.
- leto_ii 3y agoDidn't say they were perfect, but when it comes to the speed of scientific and technological progress, nothing beats the late 19th- mid 20th century era.
- pixl97 3y agoThis is kind of like saying that the first person harvesting an apple orchard is better than the people that come after because they get to pick the low hanging fruit. If you dug them out of their graves and presented the scientific world as we have it now it's highly likely they'd see the predicaments we are in now and a whole lot of that technological progress would be different. Turned out running economies on leaded gas burns up atmospheres and brains. Turns out that physics didn't have unlimited secrets to divulge without ever increasing amounts of effort and energy being applied to discover them.
- wnoise 3y agoI don't understand why moving walkways aren't called slidewalks.
- reilly3000 3y agoPure genius.
- wheybags 3y agoI call them notscalators, but yours is better :p
- odiroot 3y agoDoesn't work for Brits with their pavements ;). Maybe "movements" then.
- wiml 3y agoThey are in some old SF. I like the term too.
- NelsonMinar 3y agoThe Edison film at the end of the article is just fantastic.
- tavavex 3y agoI was especially impressed to see that this was rolled out on an entire 3.5km-long loop, rather than some small localized attraction. It's interesting not just because of the engineering that was done, but because it shows what 1900 people thought "the future" would be like. I'm guessing they expected moving sidewalks to become common around cities by now.
- layer8 3y agoI suspect the scale was necessary because the mechanism only works as a loop, and only allows limited curvature unless you make it a perfect circle, in which case it's just a rotating platform.
- timeon 3y ago> to become common around cities by now Mass production of cars changed many things and directions.
- qwertox 3y agoThere's a video at the bottom of the article apparently shot by Thomas Edison in August 1900. YouTube has a couple more of them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjpCVQgKZsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjpCVQgKZsc Here's also an AI-upscaled/-colorized video which contains a bit of the boardwalk. https://youtu.be/fo_eZuOTBNc?t=297 https://youtu.be/fo_eZuOTBNc?t=297
- musiciangames 3y agoThe video appears to show adult men punching children. I’m guessing the children were making a nuisance of themselves. Different times.
- bmmayer1 3y agoInteresting that the exposition map[0] has the Eiffel Tower labeled as "Tour de 300 Métres." I wonder when it became known as the Eiffel Tower in common parlance? [0]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/P._Bineteau%2C_Exposition_universelle_de_1900_-_plan_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9ral.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/P._Binet...
- mkl 3y agoIt was called the Eiffel Tower informally even before it was built: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower#Artists'_protest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower#Artists'_protest
- ITB 3y agoThe Edison video is amazing
- ricardobeat 3y agoOver a hundred years ago, and if built today it would still be impressive. Technological progress feels very fast and very slow at the same time.
- csours 3y agoI wonder how long it stayed in operation, how much it cost, and if it kept running for a while what parts of it broke most often.
- Someone 3y agoSo, this is a very long, slow-moving, open train. Advantages I see: - you can hop on and off wherever you want. That makes them useful for short trips - no waiting time; you can hop on whenever you want. That likely makes up for lack of speed on short trips. - if built at ground level, pedestrians can cross the line fairly easily wherever they want (hop on, hop off on the other side), so these wouldn’t split cities in half the way railways do, but only for pedestrians. Disadvantages I see: - slow for longer journeys - power inefficient if there are few passengers (trains are, too, but this is a really, really long train. Imagine moving these 3km of track to move 10 persons). You can’t scale down capacity for less busy hours. - all maintenance requires shutting down the system (in contrast, with trains, you take off the train and put another one on for most maintenance) - ¿safety?
- Name_Chawps 3y agoYou can scale down for less busy hours by just turning it off.
- Someone 3y agoYes, but that’s an on/off switch. Trains and buses allow for a gradual shutdown by scaling down on number of rides per hour or on train/bus size. That’s a big advantage because, if people can’t get home from a party at 3AM, they may choose to use their car to get at the party, and, having invested in a car, and getting used to using it, may stop using public transport. That, in turn, can lead to further decrease in service, which leads to fewer people using public transport, etc.
- jeffchien 3y agoHazards to pets and sandals/Crocs wearers, perhaps.
- creer 3y agoI'm amazed at how large the Exposition was. And consequently, the moving sidewalk.
- solalf 3y agoWell this is actually still very common in Paris! A number of subway stations have adopted them for long corridors connecting platforms of different lines within the same station. They move people at 4km/h on average, but the one in Montparnasse station goes up to 9km/h (used to be 11!). They’re mighty useful to hurried Parisian commuters. https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trottoir_roulant_rapide https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trottoir_roulant_rapide