Moving walkway
A moving walkway – also known as an autowalk, moving pavement, moving sidewalk, travolator, or travelator – is a slow-moving conveyor mechanism that transports people across a horizontal or inclined plane over a short to medium distance. They can be used by standing on them or walking on them, allowing users to cover that distance with less effort and/or more speed than by walking. They are commonly installed in pairs to provide transport in each direction. They are typically designed similarly to escalators and share much of the same underlying technology.
History
The first moving walkway debuted at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States as The Great Wharf Moving Sidewalk. Designed by architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee, it had two sections: one where passengers were seated, and one where they could stand or walk. It ran in a loop down the length of a lakefront pier to a casino.Six years later, another moving walkway was presented to the public at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris as the Rue de l'Avenir. It consisted of three elevated platforms—the first stationary, the second moving at a moderate speed, and the third moving at about. These demonstrations likely inspired some of H. G. Wells' settings mentioned in the "Science Fiction" section below.
The Beeler Organization, a New York City consulting firm, proposed a Continuous Transit System with Sub-Surface Moving Platforms 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 Speedwalk, the first commercial moving walkway in the United States was installed in 1954 in Jersey City, New Jersey, inside the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad Erie station at the Pavonia Terminal. Built by Goodyear, it was long and moved up a 10% grade at. It 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. On January 1, 1960, Tina Marie Brandon, age 2, was killed on the moving sidewalk.
Moving walkways generally move at a slower speed than a natural walking pace, and when people step onto one, they tend to slow their pace to compensate; thus moving walkways only minimally improve travel times and overall transport capacity.
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 – and are effectively identical to escalators in their construction. Most have a metal surface, though some models have a rubber surface for extra traction. The plates are one-piece, die-cast aluminium pallets, with a typical width between the walkway sides of. The walkway can be powered by an AC induction motor. Example speed is.
- 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.
High-speed walkways
Early examples
In 1961, Jim Downer designed and had produced by Dunlop, the first flat running 'Travelator' for a BBC exhibition in Charing Cross underground station.In the 1970s, Dunlop developed the Speedaway system. It was in fact an invention by Gabriel Bouladon and Paul Zuppiger of the Battelle Memorial Institute at their former Geneva, Switzerland facility. A prototype was built and demonstrated at the Battelle Institute in Geneva in the early 1970s, as can be attested by a Swiss television program entitled Un Jour une Heure aired in October 1974. The great advantage of the Speedaway, as compared to the then existing systems, was that the embarking/disembarking zone was both wide and slow-moving, whereas the transportation zone was narrower and fast-moving.
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. 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 challenge, also solved by the Battelle team. 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 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, which was developed by Dassault and RATP and whose prototype was installed at Invalides station in Paris. The speed at entry and exit was, while the maximum speed was. 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 licensed a design to a number of larger moving walkway manufacturers. Trial systems were installed at Flinders Street railway 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.
Trottoir roulant rapide (TRR)
In 2002, CNIM designed and installed the experimental, trottoir roulant rapide high-speed walkway in the Montparnasse–Bienvenüe station in France. At first it operated at a speed of but was later reduced to due to safety concerns. As the design of the walkway requires riders to have at least one hand free to hold the handrail, those carrying bags, shopping, etc., or who are infirm or physically disabled, must use the ordinary walkway beside it, and staff were positioned at each end to determine who could and who could not use it.Using this walkway is similar to using any other moving walkway, except that there are special procedures to follow when entering or exiting at either end. On entering, there is a 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 as on an ordinary moving walkway. At the exit, the same technique is used to decelerate the riders. Users step onto a series of rollers which decelerate them slowly, rather than the abrupt halt which would otherwise take place.
The walkway proved to be unreliable, leading to many users losing their balance and having accidents. Consequently, it was removed by RATP in 2011 after nine years in service, being replaced with a standard moving walkway.
ThyssenKrupp ACCEL
In 2007, ThyssenKrupp installed two high-speed walkways in Terminal 1 at Toronto Pearson International Airport. They connect the international gates in the newly opened Pier F, located at one end of the pier, with the rest of the terminal. One walkway serves departing passengers travelling towards the gates and the other serves arriving passengers travelling towards the terminal. The airport decided to decommission the walkway in 2020.The walkway's pallet-type design accelerates and decelerates users in a manner that eliminates many of the safety risks generated by the moving belt-type used in Paris, making it suitable for use by people of all ages and sizes regardless of their health condition. 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 handrails work in a similar manner, and because of this, there is no need to hold the handrails when entering or exiting the walkway. It moves at roughly when riders step onto it and speeds up to approximately, which it remains at until near the end, where it slows back down.
ThyssenKrupp continued development of that product, and the result is Accel, an upgraded version of Express Walkway, offering speeds of up to, which is faster than of Express Walkway, and is the same speed as of original version of TRR walkway.
Inclined moving walkways
An inclined moving walkway is a type of vertical transportation used in airports and supermarkets to move people to another floor with the convenience of an elevator and the capacity of an escalator. Conflicting sources name either Goodyear Tire or Canadian elevator company Turnbull as the inventor of the inclined moving walkway.Some department stores instead use shopping cart conveyors to transport passengers and their carts between store levels simultaneously. Walmart in Canada require users of wheelchairs and other mobility aids to be accompanied by shop staff when using their moving walkways, which they refer to as 'movators'. This policy has been superseded in some stores by the installation of elevators.
Shopping carts used on inclined moving walkways usually have wheels specially designed to get caught in the grooves of the walkway's tread when rolled onto the walkway, thereby preventing the cart from rolling down. The wheels are lifted off the tread by the landing plate at the end.