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Moving walkway
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A moving walkway, moving sidewalk (in the US), moving pavement (elsewhere), autopedescalator, walkalator (primarily in Asia), travelator, autowalk, horizontal escalator, slidewalk or moveator is a slow conveyor belt that transports people horizontally or on an incline in a similar manner to an escalator. In both cases, passengers can walk or stand.
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Encyclopedia
A moving walkway, moving sidewalk (in the US), moving pavement (elsewhere), autopedescalator, walkalator (primarily in Asia), travelator, autowalk, horizontal escalator, slidewalk or moveator is a slow conveyor belt that transports people horizontally or on an incline in a similar manner to an escalator. In both cases, passengers can walk or stand. The walkways are often installed in pairs, one for each direction.
Designs
Moving walkways are built in one of two basic styles:
- Pallet type — a continuous series of flat metal plates join together to form a walkway. Most have a metal surface, though some models have a rubber surface for extra traction.
- Moving belt — these are generally built with mesh metal belts or rubber walking surfaces over metal rollers. The walking surface may have a solid feel or a "bouncy" feel.
Both types of moving walkway have a grooved surface to mesh with combplates at the ends. Also, nearly all moving walkways are built with moving handrails similar to those on escalators.
High-speed walkways
In the late 1960s Dunlop developed the Speedaway system. A prototype was demonstrated at the 1970 Osaka Expo and later at the Battelle Institute in Geneva. The entrance to the system was like a very wide escalator, with broad metal tread plates of a parallelogram shape. After a short distance the tread plates were accelerated to one side, sliding past one another to form progressively into a narrower but faster moving track which travelled at almost a right-angle to the entry section. The passenger was accelerated through a parabolic path to a maximum design speed of km/h ( mph). The experience was unfamiliar to passengers, who needed to understand how to use the system to be able to do so safely. Developing a moving hand-rail for the system presented a problem. The Speedaway was intended to be used as a stand alone system over short distances or to form acceleration and deceleration units providing entry and exit means for a parallel conventional (but fast running) Starglide walkway which covered longer distances. The system was still in development in 1975 but never went into commercial production.
Another attempt at an accelerated walkway in the 1980s was the TRAX (Trottoir Roulant Accéléré), which was developed by Dassault and RATP and whose prototype was installed in the Paris Invalides metro station. The speed at entry and exit was km/h ( mph), while the maximum speed was km/h ( mph). It was a technical failure due to its complexity, and was never commercially exploited.
In the mid 1990s the Loderway Moving Walkway company patented and licenced a design to a number of larger moving walkway manufacturers . Trial systems were installed at Flinders Street Station in Melbourne and Brisbane Airport Australia. These met with a positive response from the public, but no permanent installations were made. This system is of the belt type, with a sequence of belts moving at different speeds to accelerate and decelerate riders. A sequence of different speed handrails is also used. A video of the trials systems can be found at the following link .
In 2002, the first successful high-speed walkway was installed in the Montparnasse—Bienvenüe Métro station in Paris. At first it operated at 12 km/h (7 mph) but due to people losing their balance, the speed was reduced to 9 km/h (6 mph). It has been estimated that commuters using a walkway such as this twice a day would save 11.5 hours a year.
Using the high-speed walkway is like using any other moving walkway, except that for safety there are special procedures to follow when joining or leaving. When this walkway was introduced, staff (seen here in yellow jackets) determined who could and who could not use it. As riders must have at least one hand free to hold the handrail, those carrying bags, shopping, etc., or who are infirm, must use the ordinary walkway nearby.
On entering, there is a 10-meter acceleration zone where the 'ground' is a series of metal rollers. Riders stand still with both feet on these rollers and use one hand to hold the handrail and let it pull them so that they glide over the rollers. The idea is to accelerate the riders so that they will be traveling fast enough to step onto the moving walkway belt. Riders who try to walk on these rollers are at significant risk of falling over.
Once on the walkway, riders can stand or walk. Owing to Newton's laws of motion, there is no special sensation of traveling at speed, except for headwind.
At the exit, the same technique is used to decelerate the riders. Users step on to a series of rollers which decelerate them slowly, rather than the abrupt halt which would otherwise take place.
In 2007, a similar high-speed walkway was opened in the newly opened Pier F of Pearson International Airport in Toronto, Canada - . This walkway is of the pallet type rather than the belt type. The pallets "intermesh" with a comb and slot arrangement. They expand out of each other when speeding up, and compress into each other when slowing down. The handrailings work in a similar manner. The walkway moves at roughly 2 km/h when riders step onto it, speeds up to approximately 7 km/h for the bulk of the length, and slows to 2 km/h again at the end.
Inclined moving walkways
An inclined moving walkway, also called a moving ramp or power ramp, is used in airports and supermarkets to move people to another floor with the convenience of an elevator (namely, that people can take along their suitcase trolley or shopping cart, or baby carriage) and the capacity of an escalator.
The device in operation
The carts have either a brake that is automatically applied when the cart handle is released, strong magnets in the wheels to stay adhered to the floor, or specially designed wheels that secure the cart within the grooves of the ramp, so that wheeled items travel alongside the riders and do not slip away.
The Central-Mid-levels escalator system on Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong also has several inclined moving sidewalks. In Carlton, Victoria, Australia, another inclined moving sidewalk can be found at Lygon Court.
Some department stores instead use Vermaports—conveying systems that move shopping carts in a similar fashion to an escalator—to transport passengers and their carts between store levels simultaneously.
Inclined moving walkways can also be found at The National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland.
History
The first moving walkway debuted at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, in Chicago, Illinois. It had two different divisions: one where passengers were seated, and one where riders could stand or walk. It ran in a loop down the length of a lakefront pier to a casino. Six years later a moving walkway was also presented to the public at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900. The walkway consisted of three elevated platforms, the first was stationary, the second moved at a moderate speed, and the third at about six miles an hour. These demonstrations likely served as inspiration for some of H. G. Wells' settings mentioned in the "Science Fiction" section below.
The Beeler Organization, a New York City consulting firm, proposed a for Atlanta in 1924, with a design roughly similar to the Paris Exposition system. The proposed drive system used a linear induction motor. The system was not constructed.
The first commercial moving walkway in the United States was installed in 1954 in Jersey City, NJ, inside the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad's Erie station) . Named the "Speedwalk" and built by Goodyear, it was 277 ft (84.5 m) long and moved up a 10 percent grade at a speed of 1.5 mph (2.4 km/h). The walkway was removed a few years later when traffic patterns at the station changed.
The first moving walkway in an airport was installed in 1958 at Love Field in Dallas, Texas.
Manufacturer-specific nomenclature
The colloquialism "travelator" likely originated with the product named Trav-O-Lator, which is a particular brand of moving walkway distributed exclusively by United Technologies' Otis Elevator Company. Major manufacturers such as Schindler and Mitsubishi presently refer to their products officially as "moving walks."
Applications
Moving walkways are frequently found in the following locations:
Airports
They are popular there because most larger airports require passengers – often with heavy luggage in tow – to walk considerable distances. Moving walkways may be utilized:
- in passageways between concourses and the terminal
- within particularly long concourses
- as a connector between terminals, or
- as access to a parking facility or a ground transport station.
Of particular note is the Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris, which has several moving walkways inside a series of futuristic suspended tubes.
Museum exhibits
Moving sidewalks may be used:
- to ensure that a museum exhibit is viewed in a certain sequence
- to provide a particular aesthetic effect
- to make sure the crowd moves through at a reliable pace.
The 1975-76 American Freedom Train did this; they had a moving walkway inside each successive railroad car, thus maximizing the number of people who could view the interior exhibits in the limited time the train was stopped in each town.
The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC uses a moving walkway to connect the two main galleries.
The Tower of London in London, UK, uses a moving walkway when passing the cabinets which contain the Crown Jewels.
Zoos
Similar to museums, some zoological park exhibits have a moving walkway to ease guests through an animal display or habitat. An aquarium at the Mall of America does this with a moving walkway made up of specially rounded pallets that enable it to change directions en route. And the San Diego Zoo uses moving ramps not for an exhibit per se, but to help guests ascend steep grades.
Theme parks
Some amusement park rides, such as continuous-motion dark rides like Disney's Haunted Mansion, make use of a moving sidewalk to assist passengers in boarding and disembarking rides and attractions. Some examples include:
- the Ultra Twister, a roller coaster at the now closed Astroworld in Houston, Texas. (It had a moving walkway with no handrail for passengers to step on prior to boarding their car. The walkway would move at the same speed as the approaching cars, allowing passengers completing the ride to step off and for boarding passengers to enter the car. A loudspeaker announced "Moving conveyor, please watch your step" to warn of the moving walkway.)
- the exit from the Space Mountain attraction at Walt Disney World has a long moving walkway which changes pitch multiple times.
- the exit from the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Walt Disney World has a inclined moving walkway leading towards a gift shop.
Public transportation
Moving walkways are useful for remote platforms in underground subway/metro stations, or assisting with lengthier connections between lines, for example Waterloo Underground Station in London.
Science fiction
The concept of a megalopolis based on high-speed walkways is common in science fiction. The first works set in such a location are A Story of the Days To Come (1897) and When The Sleeper Wakes (1899) (also republished as The Sleeper Awakes) written by H. G. Wells, which take place in a future London. Thirty years later, the silent film Metropolis (1927) depicted several scenes showing moving sidewalks and escalators between skyscrapers at high levels. Later The Roads Must Roll (1940), written by Robert A. Heinlein, depicts the risk of a transportation strike in a society based on similar-speed sidewalks. The novel is part of the Future History saga, and takes place in 1976. Isaac Asimov, in the novel The Caves of Steel (1954) and its sequels in the Robot Series, uses similar enormous underground cities with a similar sidewalk system. The period described is about the year 3000.
In each of these cases there is a massive network of parallel moving belts, the inner ones faster. Passengers are screened from wind, and there are chairs and even shops on the belt. In the Heinlein work the fast lane runs at 180 km/h, and the first "mechanical road" was built in 1960 between Cincinnati and Cleveland. The relative speed of two adjacent belts is an unrealistic 20 km/h (in the book the fast lane stops, and the second lane keeps running at 160 km/h). In the Wells and Asimov works there are more steps in the speed scale and the speeds are less extreme.
In Arthur C. Clarke's novel, Against the Fall of Night (later rewritten as The City and the Stars) the Megacity of Diaspar is interwoven with "moving ways" which, unlike Heinlein's conveyor belts, are solid floors that can mysteriously move as a fluid. On pages 11–13 of the novel, Clarke writes, An engineer of the ancient world would have gone slowly mad trying to understand how a solid roadway could be fixed at both ends while its centre travelled at a hundred miles an hour... The corridor still inclined upwards, and in a few hundred feet had curved through a complete right-angle. But only logic knew this: to the senses it was now as if one were being hurried along an absolutely level corridor. The fact that he was in reality travelling up a vertical shaft thousands of feet deep gave Alvin no sense of insecurity, for a failure of the polarizing field was unthinkable.
In Strygatsky brothers Noon Universe the worldwide network of moving roads is the one of the first megaprojects undertaken on newly united Earth before the advent of FTL starships and its consequences turned everybody's attention to the stars. These roads there are quasiliving organisms close to Clarke's description and were used for both local commuting and long-distance non-urgent transport until their eclipse in form of instant teleportation network.
The animated TV series The Jetsons depicts moving walkways everywhere, even in private homes.
See also
External links
- This clip is hand held, and at times it is a little unsteady. Towards the end of the clip note how the other people leaving the moving walkway stand with both feet firmly on the ground and one hand on the handrail whilst passing through the deceleration zone.
- , a BBC article on the high-speed travelator at Gare Montparnasse station in Paris. (provided by )
- , BBC
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