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People mover
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A people mover or automated people mover (APM) is a fully automated, grade-separated mass transit system.
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Encyclopedia
A people mover or automated people mover (APM) is a fully automated, grade-separated mass transit system. The term is generally used only to describe systems serving relatively small areas such as airports, downtown districts or theme parks, but is sometimes applied to considerably more complex automated systems.
The term was originally applied to two different systems, developed roughly at the same time. One was Skybus, an automated mass transit system prototyped by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation beginning in 1964. The other, called PeopleMover or Goodyear PeopleMover, was an attraction sponsored by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company which opened at Disneyland in 1967. Now, however, the term "people mover" is generic, and may use technologies such as monorail, duorail, automated guideway transit or maglev. Propulsion may involve conventional on-board electric motors, linear motors or cable traction.
Some complex APMs deploy fleets of small vehicles over a track network with off-line stations, and supply near non-stop service to passengers. These taxi-like systems are more usually referred to as personal rapid transit (PRT). Other complex APMs have similar characteristics to mass transit systems, and there is no clear cut distinction between a complex APM of this type and an automated mass transit system.
History
One of the first automated systems for human transportation was the Never Stop Railway, constructed for the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, London in 1924. This railway consisted of 88 unmanned carriages circling the exhibition. The carriages ran on narrow gauge track, and were propelled by a gripping a revolving screw thread running between the tracks; by adjusting the pitch of this thread at different points in the track the carriages could be speeded up, or slowed down to a slow walking pace in stations to allow passengers to join and leave. The railway ran for the two years of the exhibition and was then dismantled.
Goodyear and Stephens-Adamson
Late 1949, Mike Kendall, Chief Engineer and Chairman of the Board of Stephens-Adamson Mfg. Co asked Al Neilson an engineer in the Industrial Products Division of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., if Goodyear had ever considered working on People Movers. He felt that with Goodyear’s ability to move materials in large quantities on conveyor belts they should consider moving batches of people.
Four years of engineering design, development, and testing, led to a joint patent being issued for three types of people movers which had been named Speedwalk, Speedramp, and Carveyor.
Goodyear would sell the concept and Stephens-Adamson would manufacture and install the components.
A speedwalk consisted of a flat conveyor belt riding on a series of rollers, or a flat slippery surface, moving at . (approximately half the speed of walking) the passengers would walk onto the belt and could stand or walk to the exit point. They were supported by a moving handrail.
Customers were expected to be airport terminals, ballparks, train stations, etc. Today several manufacturers produce similar units called moving walkways.
A Speedramp was very similar to a Speedwalk but it was used to change elevations, up or down a floor level. This could have been accomplished by an escalator, but the Speedramp would allow wheeled luggage, small handcarts etc. to ride the belt at an operating cost predicted to be much lower than escalators or elevators.
The first successful installation of a Speedramp, spring of 1954, was in the Hudson and Manhattan RR Station in Jersey City to connect the Erie RR to the Hudson & Manhattan Tubes, This unit was long, rose up on a 15 degree grade and only cost $75,000.
A Carveyor consisted of many small cubicles or cars carrying ten people riding on a flat conveyor belt from Point A to Point B. The belt would be riding on a series of Motorized Rollers. The purpose of the motorized rollers was to facilitate the gradual acceleration and deceleration speeds on the conveyor belt and over come the tendency of all belts to stretch at start up and during shutdown. At point “A” passengers would enter a Speedwalk running parallel to the belts and cars of the Carveyor. The cars would be moving at the same speed as the Speedwalk; the passengers would enter the cars and be seated, while the motorized rollers would increase the speed of the cars up to the traveling speed (which would be preset depending on the distance to be covered).
At point B Passengers could disembark and by means of a series of flat slower belts (Speedwalks) go to other Carveyors to other destinations or out to the street.
The cars at point B would continue on rollers around a semicircle and then reverse the process carrying passengers back to point A.
The target installation was to be the 42nd street shuttle in NYC between Times Square and Grand Central Terminal station.
Colonel Sydney H. Bingham, Chairman of the New York City Board of Transportation had several meetings with a group of architects who were trying to revamp the whole NYC subway system in the heart of town to connect Penn. Station, Madison Square Garden, Times Square, Grand Central and several new office complexes together.
Several of these architects were involved in other programs and in later years many variations of the Carveyor people movers developed.
In November 1954 the New York City Transit Authority issued an order to Goodyear and Stephens-Adamson to build a Complete Carveyor System between Times Square and Grand Central. A brief Summary and confirmation can be found in Time Magazine Monday November 15, 1954. under the heading “Subway of the Future”. The cost was to be under $4 million, but the order was never fulfilled due to political difficulties.
Chocolate World in Hershey Pa., Disneyland in California, and Disney World in Florida are among many other locations that have used variations of the Carveyor concept. If You Had Wings used the Omnimover
Other developments
The term 'people mover' was used by Walt Disney, when he and his Imagineers were working on the new 1967 Tomorrowland at Disneyland. The name was used as a working title for a new attraction, the PeopleMover. According to Imagineer Bob Gurr, "the name got stuck," and it was no longer a working title.
The world's first airport people mover was installed in 1971 at Tampa International Airport in the United States. APMs have now become common at large airports and progressive hospitals in the United States.
Driverless metros have become common in Europe and parts of Asia. The economics of automated trains tend to reduce the scale so tied to "mass" transit, so that small-scale installations are feasible. Thus cities normally thought of as too small to build a metro (e.g. Rennes, Lausanne, Brescia, etc.) are now doing so.
On September 30, 2006, the Peachliner in Komaki, Aichi Prefecture, Japan became that nation's first people mover to cease operations.
In cities in Indonesia, Thailand, Brazil, ... the Aeromovel has been introduced. The aeromovel is a pneumatically propelled automated peoplemover (APM). . This pneumatical people mover is much more simple than true people movers and have been based on atmospheric trains.
Manufacturers
Examples
Urban transit
Canada
- Toronto, Ontario: Scarborough RT (semi-automated)
- Toronto, Ontario: LINK Train (Fully Automated)
- Vancouver, British Columbia: SkyTrain
Denmark
England
France
Germany
Japan
*Hiroshima: Astram Line
Malaysia
The Philippines
Singapore
Taiwan
USA
- Indianapolis, Indiana: Clarian Health People Mover
- Las Vegas, Nevada: Mandalay Bay Tram
- Detroit, Michigan: Detroit People Mover -- elevated loop system (Downtown People Mover)
- Jacksonville, Florida: JTA Skyway
- Miami, Florida: Metromover (Downtown People Mover)
- Orlando, Florida: Orlando International Airport
- Las Colinas, Irving, Texas -- Las Colinas APT System
- AirTrain, San Francisco, California -- San Francisco International Airport
- AirTrain JFK, Queens, New York -- John F. Kennedy International Airport
- Airtrans APM, now defunct Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport
- Skylink, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport
Airport
Many large international airports around the world feature people mover systems to transport passengers between terminals or within a terminal itself. Some people mover systems at airports connect with other public transportation systems to allow passengers to travel into the airport's city.
Other
- The former PeopleMover attraction at Disneyland, which ran from 1967 to 1995. (This is a source of the name "people mover." It was not meant to be used on a permanent basis, but WED Enterprises could not come up with any other names for it.)
- The Tomorrowland Transit Authority attraction, which was formerly called the WEDway PeopleMover, at Walt Disney World
- West Virginia University (Morgantown, West Virginia) -- a Group Rapid Transit system, similar to Personal rapid transit
- Huntsville, Alabama has a tram system that connects different buildings of the Huntsville Hospital System.
- Amsterdam Schiphol Airport's connected long-term Parking P3 and the airport terminal is an APM using electronic guidance, ensuring it does not require specific infrastructure (it runs on regular roads). Last in operation in 2004, its manufacturer is in bankruptcy.
- Slope car, a small automated monorail found in various parts of Japan, can be considered as a simple form of people mover.
- Tandy Center Subway was a people mover in Fort Worth, Texas that linked a shopping centre to its parking lot, service was discontinued in 2002.
- In addition to the Las Vegas Monorail, several people mover systems are in place in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, Nevada. Two connect the McCarran International Airport terminal 1 to its C- and D-gates. Another connects The Mirage to Treasure Island Hotel and Casino. The newest people mover connects Excalibur, Luxor, and Mandalay Bay.
- Disneyland Resort Line on the MTR of Hong Kong.
See also
External links
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