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Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

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Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#71

Post by schrodinger »

econ wrote: post #67
bluGill wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is stupid. people have places to be. Only a tiny minority are on transit for fun. Everyone else just wants to be there. you do these people a massive disservice by not making their ride efficient. and the minority who are for the ride will figure out how to make it work.

I'm not sure. I want to see public transport in a city done with rollercoasters. The amount using it for fun would go up dramatically. It would change overnight from just another utterly boring city not worth visiting into a tourist hot spot. Similarly, people who need to be places will make it work. Life is about the journey. All those roads and other boring means of transportation are just places no one wants to be…

I love this. As another poster brought up, plenty of people buy enjoyable cars and motorcycles for the pleasure of driving. Why not add a little spice to life?

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#72

Post by wongarsu »

bluGill wrote: post #57
cogman10 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars really messed a lot of that up. In the 1900s every city was walkable. Most cities had trains of some sort for the majority of transport and bikes or horses for the last mile. It really makes me sad to see even old cartoons showing off the tram systems of the day. Those all got pulled up for "progress" thrusting us all backwards into bumper to bumper traffic. Whats incredible is that happened almost immediately a…

That is looking at the past through rose colored glasses. Walkable cities are too small to have the wealth of options a car (or transit) city does. trains are nice but cars were faster for most (until congestion - but by then there were so few users that service was bad)

Being walkable doesn't preclude having transit though. It does clash with cars because cars need parking, and parking takes so much space that walking distances quickly become an issue. But subways, trams or even buses don't have that issue, they don't meaningfully decrease walkability

European cities are also quite car-infected, but in many the older core still work somewhat similar to how cities worked back then: you have the daily necessities within a 10 minute walk, for anything else you can fetch transit to the city center within 15 minutes, where you generally get everything else (except Ikea)

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#73

Post by bobthepanda »

cogman10 wrote: post #29
bofadeez wrote: post #20

Time traveler: "No, in 120 years we won't have moving sidewalks almost anywhere" Tech enthusiasts: "Oh what a luddite, didn't you see the demo? This is the future!"

Cars really messed a lot of that up. In the 1900s every city was walkable. Most cities had trains of some sort for the majority of transport and bikes or horses for the last mile. It really makes me sad to see even old cartoons showing off the tram systems of the day. Those all got pulled up for "progress" thrusting us all backwards into bumper to bumper traffic. Whats incredible is that happened almost immediately a…

Romanticizing horses, specifically, is a very rose colored glasses situation. At the turn of the last century, cities were getting overwhelmed by thousands of tons of horse feces, a similar volume of their urine, and the carcasses of overworked horses dropping dead in the street.

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#74

Post by cogman10 »

bluGill wrote: post #57
cogman10 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars really messed a lot of that up. In the 1900s every city was walkable. Most cities had trains of some sort for the majority of transport and bikes or horses for the last mile. It really makes me sad to see even old cartoons showing off the tram systems of the day. Those all got pulled up for "progress" thrusting us all backwards into bumper to bumper traffic. Whats incredible is that happened almost immediately a…

That is looking at the past through rose colored glasses. Walkable cities are too small to have the wealth of options a car (or transit) city does. trains are nice but cars were faster for most (until congestion - but by then there were so few users that service was bad)

> Walkable cities are too small to have the wealth of options a car (or transit) city does.

It's counter intuitive but it's quiet the opposite. I've lived in the UK for a while and in some pretty walkable cities. Even in the smaller cities, what you'd find is a wealth of different shops and options catering to all sorts of needs.

But then just consider that when you are walking you are being exposed to all the shops in the city.

Cars isolate. You are much less likely to notice the hole in the wall specialty shop and you are much more likely to instead just go to a Walmart or national brand place to get what you want. And you'll much more likely want to stop at all in one stores such as Walmart because you don't want to hop in your car multiple times to get the shopping done. In walkable cities, it's almost like a mall experience in every city center. 3 doors down is the hardware store and 2 more stores is the candy shop.

And because that downtown location is a highly desirable place with lots of foot traffic, any shop that goes out of business gets quickly replaced with another. Which means you generally end up with a lot of pretty high quality stores.

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#75

Post by Retric »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #38
JKCalhoun wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, love that idea of progressive velocities. I ant someone to at least build a short test track like this so we can play with it. Seem to recall they were called "slidewalks" by some Sci-Fi author—probably Heinlein, eh?

so assuming inner sidewalk moving at 100 mph, next outer at 95, and each moving at 5 per less, when big muscular terrorists placed on s-100 carrying a big cardboard box filled with nails and throw it as quickly and hard as possible so that the box of nails open up over s-75 at what velocity are the nails raining down on pedestrians on s-75?

Oddly I’m pretty sure a strong guy throwing a rock really hard at someone without the walkways would do way more damage. Nails at those speeds just aren’t that dangerous because their momentum is so low and they aren’t particularly sharp.

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#76

Post by michaelterryio »

excalibur wrote: post #15

> It’s fair to say that few of us now marvel at moving walkways, those standard infrastructural elements of such utilitarian spaces as airport terminals, subway stations, and big-box stores. You've gotta be referring to escalators here. Never seen a moving walkway in a big-box store, or a subway station for that matter.

Notwithstanding the people responding, yes, it is extremely uncommon in "big box stores".

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#77

Post by cogman10 »

bobthepanda wrote: post #73
cogman10 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars really messed a lot of that up. In the 1900s every city was walkable. Most cities had trains of some sort for the majority of transport and bikes or horses for the last mile. It really makes me sad to see even old cartoons showing off the tram systems of the day. Those all got pulled up for "progress" thrusting us all backwards into bumper to bumper traffic. Whats incredible is that happened almost immediately a…

Romanticizing horses, specifically, is a very rose colored glasses situation. At the turn of the last century, cities were getting overwhelmed by thousands of tons of horse feces, a similar volume of their urine, and the carcasses of overworked horses dropping dead in the street.

> Romanticizing horses, specifically, is a very rose colored glasses situation.

Apologies, I wasn't trying to romanticize the horse aspect. Rather, the public transit and train shipping aspect.

In the US, at one point trains were so popular that even rural farms would have small train depots to load up crops on and ultimately ship goods wherever they need to be. You'd even find stores with train station docking.

In fact, before the national highway system, pretty much the only way to travel was by train.

We've taken a costly step backwards by building out the highway system and moving to semi shipping rather than keeping and expanding public transit.

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#78

Post by Animats »

bobthepanda wrote: post #13
troupo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a recurring theme throughout most of Golden Age fiction. E.g. Clifford D. Simak mentions them as a mode of transportation in The Goblin Reservation , Asimov has them in Robots of Dawn , and I'm sure I'm forgetting plenty more. It could be that it was Heinlein who kicked of the trend.

People have tried faster moving walkways many times. The problem is getting humans on and off such a system safely in a way that is easy to maintain. In practice, everyday transportation systems need to accommodate a wide variety of users safely, like a toddler, or a commuter holding a cup of coffee, or a grandmother with a walker.

> People have tried faster moving walkways many times. The problem is getting humans on and off such a system safely in a way that is easy to maintain.

Right. You can build it, but not make it ADA-compliant. One subway station in France tried a 4km/h moving sidewalk, but the accident rate was too high.

The Paris system was really two trains on parallel tracks. Here's the mechanism.[1] Same concept as buses and trains where there are turntable sections between the cars. Powered by motors on the tracks. Possibly the first application of distributed power, with many motors pulling together in a controlled way.

Disney's PeopleMover, also powered by track motors and friction, can be thought of as a descendant. Disney had elaborate plans for little cars on tracks for EPCOT, but that never worked out.

[1] https://www.worldfairs.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=125-l...

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#79

Post by bluGill »

wongarsu wrote: post #72
bluGill wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is looking at the past through rose colored glasses. Walkable cities are too small to have the wealth of options a car (or transit) city does. trains are nice but cars were faster for most (until congestion - but by then there were so few users that service was bad)

Being walkable doesn't preclude having transit though. It does clash with cars because cars need parking, and parking takes so much space that walking distances quickly become an issue. But subways, trams or even buses don't have that issue, they don't meaningfully decrease walkability European cities are also quite car-infected, but in many the older core still work somewhat similar to how cities worked back then: y…

My point was historical - in 1915 cars were a revolution to the few who had them, and there were so few in cities the downsides were not noticed.

Re: Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)

#80

Post by bluGill »

cogman10 wrote: post #74
bluGill wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is looking at the past through rose colored glasses. Walkable cities are too small to have the wealth of options a car (or transit) city does. trains are nice but cars were faster for most (until congestion - but by then there were so few users that service was bad)

> Walkable cities are too small to have the wealth of options a car (or transit) city does. It's counter intuitive but it's quiet the opposite. I've lived in the UK for a while and in some pretty walkable cities. Even in the smaller cities, what you'd find is a wealth of different shops and options catering to all sorts of needs. But then just consider that when you are walking you are being exposed to all the shops…

That depends on what you are looking for. There are plenty of shops for the common needs - but if you want an odd niche no small walkable area can support it. How many magic stories can your city support? Even something like a guitar shop need a very dense area for people who live in walking distance to be enough to support it. I can think of dozens of other niches - many smaller the above examples.
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