I'd guess that Heinlein was aware of it and scaled it up in his imagination.
The Roads must roll — they are the arteries of the nation. When they stop, everything stops. Factories idle, food rots, men starve. The nation cannot live without its Roads.
A thousand feet wide, level as a floor, strip after strip moving past in ordered procession. The slow strips on the outside moved at five miles an hour; the inner ones faster and faster, until the express strip in the center rushed past at a hundred miles an hour.
-- The Roads Must Roll, Astounding Science Fiction, June 1940.
Caves of Steel indeed (I seem to recall a more elaborate section but can't find it again):
There was the usual, entirely normal crowd on the expressway: the standees on the lower level and those with seat privileges above. A continuous trickle of humanity filtered on the expressway, across the decelerating strips to localways or into the stationaries that led under arches or over bridges into the endless mazes of the City
Sections. Another trickle, just as continuous, worked inward from the other side, across the accelerating strips and onto the expressway.
There were the infinite lights: the luminous walls and ceilings that seemed to drip cool, even phosphorescence; the flashing advertisements screaming for attention; the harsh, steady gleam of the “lightworms” that directed THIS WAY TO JERSEY SECTIONS, FOLLOW ARROWS TO EAST RIVER SHUTTLE, UPPER LEVEL FOR ALL WAYS TO LONG ISLAND SECTIONS.
Most of all there was the noise that was inseparable from life: the sound of millions talking, laughing, coughing, calling, humming, breathing.
No directions anywhere to Spacetown, thought Baley.
He stepped from strip to strip with the ease of a lifetime’s practice. Children learned to “hop the strips” as soon as they learned to walk. Baley scarcely felt the jerk of acceleration as his velocity increased with each step. He was not even aware that he leaned forward against the force. In thirty seconds he had reached the final
sixty-mile-an-hour strip and could step aboard the railed and glassed-in moving platform that was the expressway.
Harlan Ellison also referred to “slidewalks”. They form a major plot point in “Repent, Harlequin! Said The Ticktockman”, in which the Harlequin at one point dumps millions of jellybeans on the slidewalk, jamming it and making workers late for their shift.
I read this as a teenager in a Sci-Fi compilation without paying much attention to the author, so I forgot where I read it or who wrote it or where I could find it again. But I composed and tape-recorded a melody to the lyrics which still hums in my head :
While you ride
While you glide
We are watching down inside
that your roadways go rolling along. ...
Also Arthur C Clarke in The City and the Stars (1956):
“An engineer of the ancient world would have gone slowly mad trying to understand how an apparently solid roadway could be fixed at the sides while toward the centre it moved at a steadily increasing velocity.”
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.
I took it many times, it didn't feel particularly dangerous but you had to pay more attention than on a regular moving walkway. What ultimately killed it was reliability, availability was too low. With more deployed I guess the kinks would have slowly disappeared, but the market just doesn't seem to be there.
Pearson airport in Toronto has ones that accelerate up to a fast speed. People who can’t use them can either walk beside them or hire a small electric golf cart. There is no reason to ban them just because a small portion of the population can’t use them.
Not sure but I think I read a while ago that they were removed due to unreliability (it's a while since I've been there myself).
It was very clever how they did the acceleration/deceleration - the "tiles" of the walkway fit together in such a way that each could slide on top of the next one, and at the two ends the tiles would gradually slide closer together (decelerating) or further apart (accelerating).
They were still there pretty recently when I was there. All escalators are a pain for maintenance though. Sure it's cheaper to force people to walk but that's not the point.
it is worth noting that we have transportation systems where you get into a slow moving vehicle that then speeds up. the cable car is a lot safer than a faster moving sidewalk because you can just get inside and sit down securely.
of course, it takes up a lot more space and costs a lot more money.
That's been tried. Never Stop Railway, 1924.[1] The drive system is a variable pitch screw between the rails. Large screw pitch between stations for fast travel, much tighter pitch in stations for very slow movement along the platform.
Never tried again with that kind of drive, although there are park rides where the loading platform moves. This requires safety devices and staff to prevent people jams at the end of the platform.
They are pretty common tourist transports in mountainous areas and ski resorts. They're even being used for regular public transport now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdTE4TCqkZo
And you can only hop on/hop off a cable car at predetermined locations. To keep average speed high, those tend to be spaced relatively far apart.
I’m not sure about the “takes a lot more space”, and I definitely doubt about the “costs a lot more money”. Using outdoor escalators as proxies, I suspect outdoor moving sidewalks will need lots and lots of maintenance. If you want to have some guarantee of service you’ll also need multiple sidewalks side-by-side.
One of the Canadian airports has a moving walkway that has slow on/off sections and a faster (5mph?) middle. It works a bit like a Ski lift where the chairs (walkway sections) basically bunch up at the start/end to slow down.
Back in the heyday there was this idea of the arcology where a group of people had it with their government and made their own city-utopia which would rule itself.
Very often in those they featured technology like the staggered automated walkways for transporting people around, etc.
The things I took away from reading Niven was transfer booths. The world has homogenized because information and people were transmitted instantly one from corner of the globe to another.
I loved the conservation of momentum "hack" for those teleportation booths. Go on, everyone who hasn't read it, see if you can guess how he dealt with that.
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.
Assuming that these terrorists are relatively fast runners, being in good shape, and they decide to exit the walkways on the other side, how far on the other side will they be in relation to the nail rain on s-75 they caused.
Everybody carries a gun in Heinlein stories, so those terrorists will be quickly dealt with by armed citizens, thus confirming the superiority of Libertarianism.
In 1940 when he wrote this Heinlein was a New Deal Democrat supporter of Franklin Roosevelt. He was an active progressive who had recently worked on Upton Sinclair’s socialist “End Poverty in California” campaign. His libertarian shift was twenty years in the future, in his fifties.
Those people were "everyone's self-sufficient, so only a few people down on their luck need the state" folk. They didn't realise that loads of people wouldn't be like that if they didn't have to be.
Heinlein's alleged libertarian shift. In the 1940s Heinlein was mentioned as a Social Credit supporter which implied he was always on the libertarian side of Socialism. Social Credit was the American party killed/disrupted by the red scare that believed in a UBI and universal health care. His posthumous published but first written novel "For Us, The Living" is even a wonderfully naive paean to UBI and credits a Social Credit party for its enactment and ensuing utopia.
Heinlein formally disowned some of those ideas, but did so under the duress of the McCarthy era and the Red Scare. Yet he also kept writing about them, just somewhat cloaked. Both "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" are some of the most Socialist books I've ever read, if you assume the first person narrators are for the most part bloviating Vonnegut-esque patsies (rather than the author stand-ins they are often read to be; Heinlein seemed to clever for that). "Stranger in a Strange Land" is entirely about community effort and Socialism. It contrasts interestingly with "For Us, The Living" in part because cynicism seems to have been the big shift and Heinlein can no longer imagine America leading the charge towards Socialism and invents a dead Martian race to do it. "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is often credited as a deeply Libertarian book, but I think a lot of that is misreading the narrative and not paying attention to especially the second half of the book, which is entirely about AI-lead worker's strikes towards the goals of unionization. The first half sounds like a Libertarian dream and the narrator character describes it in lush terms that make it sound so, but plot is about overthrowing that and building a much more Socialist Moon together. Heinlein even comments about that misreading in "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" which intentionally begins on a Moon like the one people reading the first half of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" seem to love, dialed up to 11 to better make it a grungy harsh Noir place for a classic gumshoe-for-hire to live, and eventually through world hopping the main character does happen to stop by "Mike's Moon" (Heinlein actually names his timelines based on the first man to step foot on the moon, I'm feeling to lazy to look this one up, but this timeline is also prominently known for a Moon AI named "Mike") after the events of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and it reads a lot more Socialist and lot kinder than the protagonist's Moon the book started in.
A lot of modern Libertarians wouldn't expect a crossover boundary with Socialism like Social Credit, which is one of the problems with claiming politics is a spectrum or plane (there are more useful curves where ideologies meet than that), and a lot of modern Libertarians don't trust ideas like UBI and universal health care and don't trust things like unions again this century (despite having past pro-worker/pro-union perspectives), so it is easy to claim that Heinlein shifted over 20 years. But also, if Heinlein was a Social Credit + Libertarian throughout his life, the rest of politics shifted so much around Heinlein that he may have stayed in exactly the same place and it looked like he shifted.
I think his writing certainly shifted, but I think towards cynicism and anger and frustration after WWII and especially after the Red Scare, not necessarily towards deeper Libertarianism.
I also think there are lessons there for modern Libertarians, too. There are modern Libertarians feeling receptive to talking about ideas like UBI again as something that can have space in Libertarian conversations. There could be room in American politics again for a party like Social Credit that can be a coalition between Libertarian values and Democratic Socialist ones. The Libertarians could find better creative allies than destructive tendencies of "the far right". Talking about Heinlein's books isn't a bad place to start those conversations.
Thanks for that scholarly and thoughtful comment. The intro to The Roads Must Roll is an example of that complexity. It starts with a labor union meeting arguing for the workers to strike, and then a counter argument that could be an unacknowledged contribution from Ayn Rand. And this was from the presumably progressive early Heinlein.
I'd like to be there for a debate between 1940 Heinlein and 1980 Heinlein. I wouldn't be surprised if that event is scheduled for the Howard family reunion at the end of time and Time Enough for Love.
Which, to be fair, is also a Socialist utopia couched into a lot of Libertarian jargon/perspectives (to well beloved to mock extremes such as the way that society handles, say, the "Extreme Libertarian" approach to the incest taboo).
They have an inner and outer set of moving sidewalks as the loading area for one of the Harry Potter Universal Orlando rides (the one in Hogwart's Castle.) It's extremely disorienting at first but they have lots of staff moving people into the seats, so no one ends up hitting the walls.
We were casually waiting in line for a while, then suddenly we were led into the area to get onto the ride and had a 'holy shit, they're serious about this one' moment.
Edit: the Universal Hollywood ride doesn't seem to have this (as of 2024), so I'm not sure if the Orlando one still does.
The slow strips on the outside moved at five miles an hour; the inner ones faster and faster...
Not good enough. The same strip should go faster and faster over time and decelerate near its end. It sounds impossible, but I can think of a few ways to make it work.
The naive implementation is a train: everybody enters at once at a fixed point, the strip accelerates, everybody leave at the next stop or stay for the next stop. I wonder if you devised a way to make people keep accelerating while other enter and leave the strip. Side strips at lower speeds are too easy a solution.
Wow, this is exactly the staggered-speed walkway system I once saw in a Philip K. Dick short story, forget which, but obviously it was written after this.
I love the kid who is hamming it up at the bottom of the frame. I've been a photographer/videographer for my entire professional career and have run into this kid many, many times. Adults exhibit this behavior too but it is usually much more moderated.
This kid had to know what a camera was, which end was filming (some early film cameras appeared to be simple boxes), and wanted to make his mark on the final product.
It’s crazy to me watching this and thinking that if that kid lived to 100 he would’ve died 30+ years ago. That unknown child will be forever captured on this film.
Every time I watch old films with children in them I always think about how they’ve been dead, hopefully of old age, for a long time already.
Not to be grim, but he was the perfect age class to spend 4 years in the trenches...
The French males born in 1894 had a 92% mobilization rate (those who survived infant mortality that was still huge at the time). In 1920, only 48% of this age class was still alive (the big three killer being infant mortality, combat losses and the "Spanish" (Kansas) flu).
There's a German black-and-white comedy "Die Feuerzangenbowle" from 1944 and most of the actors knew this was going to be their last film. They were drafted into the war right after filming wrapped up and all of them died, apart from the main star.
You may be thinking of a different film, as all the cast members listed on wikipedia[0] are stated to have died after 1945.
The trivia section of the German wiki page of the same film says there's a disputed rumour that the film was prolonged to help the young extras avoid conscription.
> Every time I watch old films with children in them I always think about how they’ve been dead, hopefully of old age, for a long time already.
I've got movies (black & white, no audio) recorded on a "Pathe-Baby" camera [1] from my grand-mother and her sister, my great-aunt, in the early 1920s, where they're both little girls playing.
I knew them both very well, they lived through WWII in Europe and they both died old. My great-aunt lived until her 100th year.
Very few things are as moving as this little, short Pathe Baby vids I've got of them.
A few years ago we asked a little local shop to convert these to digital format and these files are precious treasure in the family.
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 after expansion of personal vehicles.
> 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.
Not the "last mile". The _only_ mile. Cities were so walkable that London had multiple distinct local accents because people were living their entire lives in one neighborhood, venturing outside only for special occasions.
This changed only with the invention of electric trams that allowed people to relatively cheaply move around. Technically, horse-driven trams were invented a bit earlier but they never got built at scale.
The early trains did not significantly change the situation, they were more useful for trade and long trips. They were not frequent enough for daily commutes for the majority of city residents.
London and Paris were real outliners, with the early adoption of steam-powered subways. Mostly because they had to due to their size, but it really was the tram that initially allowed the working-class city population to commute freely.
It's also interesting that it coincides with the significant boost in productivity, and also with general improvements to workers' rights.
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.
The suburb was invented by/for the train. We called the first ones "street car suburbs" for good reason - the rail was why they were even possible in the first place. Cars work better than rails in suburbs (no congestion) and so rails have mostly disappeared, but rails absolutely could work in suburbs again if we invested in making them fast and frequent (which is expensive so we won't)
> 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.
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.
> but if you want an odd niche no small walkable area can support it.
You'd be really surprised. I knew smaller cities with shops dedicated to Warhammer 40k. [1] (Surprisingly, still in business :) )
> Even something like a guitar shop need a very dense area for people who live in walking distance to be enough to support it.
A guitar shop just needs enough people interested in guitars. Being walkable doesn't mean there's no transit. Usually, walkable cities will have a city center where the shops are concentrated and if the city is big enough, you'll end up with a bus station in the city center. In fact, the referenced city has several of those shops. [2]
This isn't a large city, it's around 100,000. It's also fairly isolated. Nobody is coming to this city to get a guitar.
My comments (this thread) were in context of 120 years ago when cars were a rich person's toy and most people lived on farms and so didn't have access to the transit that existed. That a store can make it today is different because context is different.
How many of the customers of the Warhammer store walked there from their house? How many came from a different cities because it was the closest store? The store does well because it can draw from a much larger area than a pure walking (or the limited trams of back then)
Similar for guitars - I expect a city of 100k to support 1-2 guitar stores - but I expect the majority of customers are not walking. Maybe they drive, maybe they take transit.
Not in the UK but yes in the US (in the 1900s, only 10% of the UK population farmed. Most were in the service industry and manufacturing). There's also a very different city layouts in the UK vs the US.
If you were a farmer in the US in the 1900s, you'd mostly likely ride a horse.
> How many of the customers of the Warhammer store walked there from their house?
Almost 0, but a very large percentage got there via bus and walked from the bus station to the store. For these older cities that's just how it has to be because there's no room for parking.
In the context of the 1900s, biking and walking is how people would get around in the UK, they'd simply not go downtown as often. In that city in particular there are a TON of old walking trails from the outskirts to town center. I know because I walked them.
You might think "Well, it's a 1 or 2 miles away, that's just too far" but honestly when all you are used to is walking it's not. It was just more expected that taking an hour long walk happens.
> How many came from a different cities because it was the closest store?
For that city, almost 0. It's way too isolated. Even today in england you'll find a lot of people that very rarely leave the city they were born in.
> but I expect the majority of customers are not walking. Maybe they drive, maybe they take transit.
Most of it will be park and walk. You are correct in assuming that they'll likely take transit or drive to a closer location. However, because not every store has parking like the US, it's most likely that they'll have to walk some distance to and from the store however they decide to get there.
If you click around the shrewsbury city in google earth street view, what you'll notice is very few cars in the city center and a lot of people walking around.
I live in a city of about 160k inhabitants. I live about 2 kilometers away from the hypercenter. A half-hour walk, which I wouldn't consider "walking distance".
Most of the city center is inaccessible by car. Parking your car is expensive, driving is discouraged.
Removing cars means there's more space for people. It means it's safer, quieter. I'm not in mortal panic if my 4 years old drops my hand. It means the bus isn't stuck in traffic, and is therefore really fast. It's the most vibrant place I've ever lived in. It's full of life and energy.
There's a ton of small shops, whose names I can't remember, that I only discovered because I happened to walk past them. This creates a positive feedback loop. It's rewarding to just wander about, because you may discover something.
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)
It reminded me of those Asimov worlds where everything moves by machine and nobody really walks anymore. It sounds futuristic, but also a bit depressing. Sure, it’s more efficient but life feels flatter somehow.
I like that the fence moves with it. It seems like more of a complete vision than the moving sidewalks we have today, which always look like they were just dropped into a hallway.
We also seem to be unable to perfectly match food and hand speed these days. I’m not sure if this is a “feature” somehow, but it bothers me a lot. They didn’t seem to have this issue with the floor and fence, as far as I could tell.
That’s because the systems are designed to be dropped into a hallway. In modern moving walkways and escalators, the treads and handrail belt return on the underside.
The system used in Paris requires a giant bulb shape to turn around the fence, which is generally a lot harder and more expensive to accommodate.
I believe it's to allow room for the handrail belt to wear down, which brings its speed closer to the stairs until it starts de-syncing in the opposite direction. If it started perfectly, you'd have to replace the belt more frequently to maintain the same level of tolerance.
According to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ8ehplVFp4&t=636 the handrail is driven by a friction wheel that wears out over time, so its diameter gradually decreases and the handrail speed slows down (until it gets too out of sync, and the friction wheel is replaced).
So when it’s new it feels broken, the friction wheel wears until it works properly for a period of time, and then it feels broken again, so they replace the wheel with on that goes back to making it still feel broken and start the cycle again. How frustrating.
That’s the case for many/most mechanical assemblies with wear parts.
I installed a new steering box in my Jeep a few years ago - or at least, I think that’s the name of the component, but it seems wrong to my ear. The part that converts rotational motion of the steering wheel into linear motion in the steering components for the front wheels.
Anyhow, it was very tight. Not only was there no play, but I could tell it was taxing my power steering system more than normal. It took about a year for that to level out, and another 2-3 years for it to feel “normal” again. Another ~5 years and it would have exhibited perceptible “play” in the steering.
Because you'd have teeth rubbing out all through the course, which would eat them through very quickly, or you'd have to add toothed rollers throughout the course which would increase complexity tremendously.
If I were designing it and wanted to extend the maintenance interval, I think I’d use something like a CVT for a tensioner. The drive pulley would wear as normal, and the tensioner would be of a harder material and cone-shaped. As the drive pulley wears, the tensioner slides toward the large end so that the diameter of the drive pulley and the diameter of the section of the tensioner in contact with the belt remains a consistent value.
You could probably use a roller on the back side of the drive pulley to automatically adjust it, too. No electromechanical stuff needed.
Oh, and add a “squealer” - a piece of metal that makes an awful racket once the drive pulley wears down to a critical point, prompting those responsible that it should be replaced before it begins to induce unacceptable wear on the belt itself.
In Hong Kong, public outdoor escalators like the Central–Mid-Levels Escalator are a big part of public transport. They go one way - down from 6am-10am, otherwise up. They’ve regenerated/gentrified a whole area of town that was previously hard to get to. Few cars = people travel differently.
Modern urban car infrastructure is neither space- nor energy-efficient, but urban planning is long-term, and decisions shift all efficiency considerations in the long-term in a way that's hard to undo.
For example, transportation of people with the modern extensive net of streets would be most convenient and efficient if there was some kind of public transportation in small buses, available on demand and price being determined by regular market mechanisms. The difference between what I imagine and things like Uber would be a strong integration with existing train and bus lines, and public funding and legislation. Maybe self-driving will get us there, but there are also many political hurdles that make the less efficient option (high coefficient of cars pp) more attractive than the alternative that could provide better efficiency (and, ideally, also great user experience).
On demand is bad! People have places to be and they need to be able to depend on arriving on time. on demand means they can't be sure when the transport will detour to pick someone else up thus making them late. what we need are reliable fixed routes that are predictable.
making on denand reliable means that there are more vehicles driving around than we now have cars - as empty vehicles reposition just in case someone else wants to go someplace right after you.
> making on denand reliable means that there are more vehicles driving around than we now have cars - as empty vehicles reposition just in case someone else wants to go someplace right after you.
I was explicitly refering to buses because of that, or had in mind something like modern IT plus ride sharing: to use cars more efficiently.
And, in opposition to the other comment thread, my opinion is that this would improve the quality of life for people in the long-term (in urban areas, even in the relatively short term).
But without FSD, it requires drivers, so it requires more complex considerations than "just" directing cars to where there needed.
At this point, the discussion becomes tiresome and political.
But to me, the convenience of personally owned vehicles combined with the public infrastructure needed for them is inefficient in a way that affects people negatively in urban spaces.
"Space efficiency" to me would also mean to stop making life worse for people who, for whatever reason, happen to be outside but not in a car or, god forbid, need to get to places without owning a car.
I'm not dreaming of a world without cars, but I detest the concrete wasteland that I have to live in for having destroyed quality of life in favor of an excess of parking and driving areas. So I'd certainly like a world with way fewer cars and certainly I am against further increasing excess cars per person. But, like I said, to use cars efficiently, there needs to be a consensus.
Because cars require public space, and lots of it.
I would not deny this, and I don't judge people for enjoying to drive. It doesn't prevent me from thinking about alternative worlds / cities though, or in this case, just a stronger focus on establishing public car-based transportation (such as buses), in addition to train lines, which take very long to be built or are currently lacking space to be built altogether, where they would be most needed.
There is absolutely nothing less pleasing than sitting in traffic in a major North American city with aggressive drivers all around you constantly breaking laws because they think they are more important than everyone else.
In contrast European trains are down right relaxing.
Until you see the expected delay going up and you have to start doing the maths of whether you can run from X to Y in under a minute, frantically googling for a second connection and how much a taxi would cost.. (my DB experience since I usually travel by train for flights)
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.
Even with a job I'd rather spend an hour on a train than 35 minutes in LA traffic. (30 minutes... I guess I'd prefer the stress + a little more time for breakfast. But I'd put a 2x multiplier on not having to drive myself)
Your goal is still being there though, not riding the train. After a few trips you have seen the scenery out the window and just want the trip over with (though maybe you can enjoy the book you are reading most days or whatever you are doing and call it relaxation)
Reading a book is being productive. You can also write, work, or nap. In contrast driving is the biggest waste of time in a persons life. I feel so strongly about this that I’d accept a vastly smaller house just to minimize time travelling. Second best to that is not driving so that I can make use of my time.
What I can't do is start making supper for my family. I can't play games with my family. I can't practice my drums. I can't make chips on my lathe. There is a very long list of things people want to do in life that cannot be done. If what you happen to want to do at the moment is something you can do on transit good for you - but for many they are doing that as a second best because they can't do whatever it is they want to do.
Time matters in the above. If your trip is 15-20 minutes time to unwind seems to be universal and so almost nobody really has anything they want to do. If you trip if an hour that is cutting into other things in life. (Note that I didn't mention how you take the trip in this part, people who drive fast the same time concerns for longer trips)
I ride the train kind of recreationally. Not just to ride it but to go into town, have a coffee and check the scene, then go back, so basically recreational.
I think a lot of the non rush hour usage is like that.
The train itself is pleasant off peak - table, wifi, I drink coffee and websurf. It's a bit squished in during rush hour though.
Hello, fellow LA traffic sufferer! I used to do the 210 to the 2 to surface streets to Century City, and the 210 to the 118 to the 405 to Santa Monica. There was no transit that was going to tame those beasts :-) but a commuter motorcycle in Los Angeles is a wonderful thing.
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.
A roller coaster would be fun. I've always kind of wanted a city to city flight that you could just jump out of with a parachute and land at your destination without the airport faff.
On the more realistic end of things, ebikes are fun.
>e-biking over a bridge, preferably at night — has developed its own ardent following. Liberated for the most part of any physical exertion, e-bikers can instead focus on the texture of the road vibrating up their arms, the wind streaking across their cheeks, the speed heightening their consciousness. “You do it in the evening, with the sunset — hell yeah,” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/nyregion/eric-adams-nyc-s...
Fun is good and all, if you enjoy it I won't argue. I enjoy a sunset myself from time to time. However most people are not enjoying in the moment. They want transportation only for the purposes of getting someplace so they can get something else done (or enjoy something else). Fun is good, but not everything is fun. I need to get home from work so I can get supper done in time for the evening activities (by coincidence I've been asked to make my homemade pretzels tonight - that takes 2 hours so I need to get home as soon as work is done)
I've had countless conversations with a friend of mine who thought not all things are supposed to be fun. Earning a living for example needs to involve a certain amount of suffering. If it lacks that quality he wouldn't be happy to be home and being home should be more appealing than working.
I ask him things like, what about working from home? That would be terrible! He replied with a sour face.
But the knife cuts both ways. If you hate the rollercoasters you will be so happy when it is finally over. The pretzels will taste even better.
Some will feel your suffering when they see it, some will enjoy seeing it.
Most people would have every other city in the world where they can be practical, sober or boring, depending on who you ask.
Most people can't always have what they want and they shouldn't. It wouldn't be good for them :-)
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?
Spice is fine - but you still need to get places and that is the primary goal of most cars. People who have the car/motorcycle for fun only nearly all have some other vehicle they use as the "daily driver" to get places. I might take a train on a sunday drive myself once in a while.
The majority of uses should be for people trying to get someplace. If the trip is also fun that is a bonus, but if it is only fun but otherwise worthless (that is something else is enough better) your system won't get many riders.
I'm not sure, the thing is, a vehicle is also a place. I had a great time working for a company using camper vans. You get almost everything a brick house offers.
A lot of people have recreational boats. They go places but the destination isn't half the fun. With cruse ships the destination is perhaps 5-10%?
Maybe we got it all wrong. Perhaps trains should have lan gaming. Have some exclusieve game that one can only play in the train with some exclusive content for the specific trip.
One could also do exclusive interactive educational material. There is a lot to learn before you become a train driver, train manager, mechanic, engineer, cleaner, etc etc
That is great for the first week or two, and then it is common place and you just want to be there. It will be old faster if you happen to ride at the same time as someone who gets motion sickness. (or worse if you are the person with motion sickness)
As far as I'm concerned, transportation is solved. I live in Paris, there are 14 (soon to be 15) metro lines covering the city in a dense underground mesh, and you never have to wait more the 5 minutes to hop into one.
Paris doesn't have the best transit in the world, but they get credit for being very good and useful. Most of the world has a lot to learn from them. Most people don't live in places with transport anywhere near that good.
Don't get complainant. There is still a lot Paris needs to improve on. Please show the world what the next level looks like.
I think citymapper tried to execu this as a pivot. They had an idea to do it in London and other countries and did trial it for a while. Not sure why it (presumably) failed.
I'd note that startup money of the is much harder to get in London, so a US startup might be able to force the idea from experiment to profitability.
This doesn't work in cities. The vast majority of peoples movement are not immediately necessary. They can wait 10-15 minutes (or plan ahead) for efficiency. This also cuts down on costs for everyone.
On demand is bad but not for that reason. people have places to be and are bad at planning. You should be running every 5 minutes so even if they are running late it still isn't very long until you get there.
every 10-15 minutes is cheaper and so because of cost you are often forced to be this bad (or worse) just to be affordable, but it isn't what anyone wants and people who use such systems will dream of ways to make a car work where they are
Probably because for most locations, they are actually not very useful, but quite expensive and just cumbersome. They take up space, and create artificial travel-zones, and at the same time they don't even enhance the flow, because most people tend to stand still on them. For safety-reasons (and probably costs) they are usually just around walking speed. So it's overall just a fancy gadget which is only beneficial for heavy luggage or people with special demands. For those situations, we often have better and cheaper solutions.
Maybe because in airports people are sometimes required to walk long distances to go from one point to another, while in a city there are public transport, bicycles, taxis, etc. plenty of other options so walking long distances is usually not required.
I think moving sidewalks could be more suitable for shorter distances than public transport or taxis. In many situations, it doesn’t make sense to order a taxi for a trip of less than 1,000 meters, or to walk to the nearest bus stop, then wait for the bus, just to travel a single stop. There are many people with disabilities who may struggle to walk these distances and would benefit from such an option. Additionally, moving sidewalks could reduce the time it takes to travel short distances within cities.
The problem is cost/benefit. most places just don't have enough people walking far to make them worth it. They cost a fair amount to install/run, and so when few people use them they are not worth it. They also block people who are trying to cross the street (to get to the next store) instead of going down the street. They they are common in airports rare elsewhere - they don't make sense for most locations.
Moving sidewalks are worse than cars. At least with cars if you want to cross in the middle of the block you might find a break in traffic where you can do it. The moving sidewalk blocks crossing the street (except at intersections) 100% of the time.
Anyone have info on how energy-efficient moving walkways are on a person-mile basis? I'm guessing not very, but I'd love to be wrong. Taking a moving walkway instead of a subway would be awesome (assuming you could figure out the speed aspect, obviously).
During the mid 2000, an experimentation in the Montparnasse metro station in Paris transformed a moving sidewalk in order to have an acceleration ramp from 3 to 9km/h. It was slower(most of the time) than the 1900 expo's 10km/h. And there always was a "slower" sidewalk (3km/h, the default) next to it. The goal was to go up to 11km/h (it did at some point). And yet it failed, and was removed 15 years ago. Only the slow options remain.
Asimov describes networks of moving walkways on Earth. There are several adjacent ones with different speeds, and the central one is the fastest. People optimize their journeys by entering the network from the outside and gradually moving to the faster inner beltway. And vice versa when they approach their destination. It's very detailed, quite realistic… and inspiring.
Between futurama pneumatic tube, and walkalators, are there any other proposals for infra scale "pedestrian" mobilitiy. Faster/less walking seemed like one of those things futurist urbanists use to waste time speculativing now, now we've settled on escooters and exoskeletons?
> 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.
That one was in activity about the same period I took the Montparnasse station somewhat regularly, and over those years I couldn't ever take it as it was always either broken or running opposite to my direction.
I do think a concept with parallel tracks moving at different speeds would have been easier to use and more reliable though. But it might not have been revolutionary/over-engineered enough to attract attention and subsidies.
Man, they should've designed it similarly to the video, with parallel tracks with differing speeds. But people's lack of attention would probably lead them to park a foot on each track and causing a tumble.
Speaking of speed, in the Stockholm main station the escalators go faster than others I've experienced... But I don't know if they've adjusted the speed since my experience years ago.
> You've gotta be referring to escalators here. Never seen a moving walkway in a big-box store
I have seen some occasionally in stores, in or around Paris. They usually are on an incline to allow trolleys to be taken up or down a level. Or similarly outside malls to get trolleys to the upper level of a car park. That’s in places where you have to stack car parks instead of just having them sprawl all over the place, of course.
> or a subway station for that matter.
There are a few of them in Paris métro stations. Some of them in the London Underground, as well.
only those that carry the shopping trolleys up/downstairs, designed so the wheels get locked into place.
I have never seen a flat one in anything else but airports or connections between other mass transit transports such as metros and trains. Definitely not in big box stores as they would be inconvenient and slower than pushing the trolley in the flat.
I wear a hat outside. It makes walking in the Seattle rain quite pleasant, as my glasses don't fog up and the water doesn't go down the back of my neck. When sunny, I don't need to apply sunscreen, and the glare from the top of my head does not cause car crashes.
As a bonus, I can imagine myself as Clint Eastwood.
People were spending much more time outside and the roads were much more dusty. You need a hat to keep yourself from the sun and the dust. Cars made them obsolete.
They also make it way easier to great people even over some distance, without awkwardly moving your hand in the air or shouting and annoying all the others.
Men wearing hats is still quite common today. But the style has changed to baseball caps and similar forms. Most of those "dress codes" usually also have a more practical origin. So it's less of a code, and more a practical benefit.
If you are interested in this topic, especially from the US perspective, I recommend this book: https://www.alibris.com/Hatless-Jack-The-President-the-Fedor... . There was apparently significant social pressure for all men to wear hats until the mid C 20th.
At around 1.10 in the video something curious happens: a grown up "passenger"throws a young boy who tries to enter the sidewalk off it. What is going on? Were people more rude in those days?
used to go between levels so a flat escalator, can take trolleys or there is a trolley chain haul beside. Bunnings (Hammerbarn if you must) have them. Giant tilt slab constructed category killers. Where sprawl is permitted they're a one layer building but in space constrained areas they have two or three (carpark under a 2 layer building) and these walkways exist to get your inflatable shark, chainsaw and bucket of chips down or up, depending.
I ponder this kind of things from time to time. This one makes a very enjoyable puzzle because it is extremely simply to move people on a conveyor or a rolling platform but amazingly complicated to get them on and off if you want to run it at any meaninfull speed, absurdly complicated.
My mental gymnastics is mostly trying to mobilize an entire city with the concept. I see some research suggesting there is lots of room between walking and driving distance. Bringing a bicycle also has its down sides.
Because getting on and off is already so difficult one tends not to notice the other problems with the tech. A simple crossroad is already a problem.
Moving fast is no issue for the more athletic passenger without luggage. It is also the most useless device to them. People with mobility issues don't have to get on but they do have to cross the road.
You would want to slow down or stop the surface, put a fence around it, you would want chairs, a roof would be nice, perhaps walls so that you can further control the climate. And then you have a bus, metro or tram. (haha)
One cool variation (not my idea) was to have a moving platform fromwhich to get in and out of a moving train, tram or metro. You could also make vehicles that connect on the sides. Those would have lots of fragile moving parts and potential dangerous situations if they fail. I see a night train misaligned with the station one time with the last door opening above the entrance of a pedestrian tunnel. A drunk guy almost walked out into the 5 meter drop. That seems preferable over falling between two moving trains.
He was a child and probably of a lower (aspirational) class that the guy who slapped him. Children and working-class people having rights is a surprisingly recent concept.
Someone else in these comments said s/he wonders what lives the people ended up living who were seen in old photos/videos. Your comment makes me wonder what life this boy (well, he's our senior) lived, and what his impact is beyond being a participant of a curious event in a YouTube video. I guess he had a paper trail, relatives, etc, but there's probably no way to identify him from the present (except if someone's grand-grandkid can give us an anecdote about his grand-grandfather seeing a kid being shoved at the moving walkways in Paris..
There's a good chance he was fighting in WWI being in his mid 20s.
If he survived that he lived through economic crisis in the twenties and thirties and ultimately WWII including occupation and terror in France.
And ultimately if he got old enough he could have witnessed the early cold war but also European economic bounce back and begining reconciliation between former enemies.
I'd guess that Heinlein was aware of it and scaled it up in his imagination.
https://ia601208.us.archive.org/32/items/calibre_library_178...Asimov went into some detail with this premise too, in Caves of Steel iirc. I suppose he probably got it from Heinlein.
Caves of Steel indeed (I seem to recall a more elaborate section but can't find it again):
There was the usual, entirely normal crowd on the expressway: the standees on the lower level and those with seat privileges above. A continuous trickle of humanity filtered on the expressway, across the decelerating strips to localways or into the stationaries that led under arches or over bridges into the endless mazes of the City Sections. Another trickle, just as continuous, worked inward from the other side, across the accelerating strips and onto the expressway.
There were the infinite lights: the luminous walls and ceilings that seemed to drip cool, even phosphorescence; the flashing advertisements screaming for attention; the harsh, steady gleam of the “lightworms” that directed THIS WAY TO JERSEY SECTIONS, FOLLOW ARROWS TO EAST RIVER SHUTTLE, UPPER LEVEL FOR ALL WAYS TO LONG ISLAND SECTIONS.
Most of all there was the noise that was inseparable from life: the sound of millions talking, laughing, coughing, calling, humming, breathing.
No directions anywhere to Spacetown, thought Baley.
He stepped from strip to strip with the ease of a lifetime’s practice. Children learned to “hop the strips” as soon as they learned to walk. Baley scarcely felt the jerk of acceleration as his velocity increased with each step. He was not even aware that he leaned forward against the force. In thirty seconds he had reached the final sixty-mile-an-hour strip and could step aboard the railed and glassed-in moving platform that was the expressway.
No directions to Spacetown, he thought.
Harlan Ellison also referred to “slidewalks”. They form a major plot point in “Repent, Harlequin! Said The Ticktockman”, in which the Harlequin at one point dumps millions of jellybeans on the slidewalk, jamming it and making workers late for their shift.
Vance also had a novel with mechanical roads. I guess that was a common trope back when the first mechanical stairs appeared.
I read this as a teenager in a Sci-Fi compilation without paying much attention to the author, so I forgot where I read it or who wrote it or where I could find it again. But I composed and tape-recorded a melody to the lyrics which still hums in my head :
Thanks for posting.I think the original was supposed to be to the music from "The Caissons Go Rolling Along".
Also Arthur C Clarke in The City and the Stars (1956):
“An engineer of the ancient world would have gone slowly mad trying to understand how an apparently solid roadway could be fixed at the sides while toward the centre it moved at a steadily increasing velocity.”
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...
The too-fast one in Paris was 12km/h, not 4km/h which would be OK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway#Trottoir_roulan...
I took it many times, it didn't feel particularly dangerous but you had to pay more attention than on a regular moving walkway. What ultimately killed it was reliability, availability was too low. With more deployed I guess the kinks would have slowly disappeared, but the market just doesn't seem to be there.
Maybe because they began to iron out problems and saw the TCO rise too much.
Pearson airport in Toronto has ones that accelerate up to a fast speed. People who can’t use them can either walk beside them or hire a small electric golf cart. There is no reason to ban them just because a small portion of the population can’t use them.
Not sure but I think I read a while ago that they were removed due to unreliability (it's a while since I've been there myself).
It was very clever how they did the acceleration/deceleration - the "tiles" of the walkway fit together in such a way that each could slide on top of the next one, and at the two ends the tiles would gradually slide closer together (decelerating) or further apart (accelerating).
They were still there pretty recently when I was there. All escalators are a pain for maintenance though. Sure it's cheaper to force people to walk but that's not the point.
it is worth noting that we have transportation systems where you get into a slow moving vehicle that then speeds up. the cable car is a lot safer than a faster moving sidewalk because you can just get inside and sit down securely.
of course, it takes up a lot more space and costs a lot more money.
That's been tried. Never Stop Railway, 1924.[1] The drive system is a variable pitch screw between the rails. Large screw pitch between stations for fast travel, much tighter pitch in stations for very slow movement along the platform.
Never tried again with that kind of drive, although there are park rides where the loading platform moves. This requires safety devices and staff to prevent people jams at the end of the platform.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX_MlWL7YKM
I'm talking about aerial cable cars, which are plenty in use around the world today. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/X5qjnryYWQY
They are pretty common tourist transports in mountainous areas and ski resorts. They're even being used for regular public transport now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdTE4TCqkZo
And you can only hop on/hop off a cable car at predetermined locations. To keep average speed high, those tend to be spaced relatively far apart.
I’m not sure about the “takes a lot more space”, and I definitely doubt about the “costs a lot more money”. Using outdoor escalators as proxies, I suspect outdoor moving sidewalks will need lots and lots of maintenance. If you want to have some guarantee of service you’ll also need multiple sidewalks side-by-side.
To be fair, on all moving walkways today you can only really get off at the beginning and the end.
That link is fantastic, thanks!
One of the Canadian airports has a moving walkway that has slow on/off sections and a faster (5mph?) middle. It works a bit like a Ski lift where the chairs (walkway sections) basically bunch up at the start/end to slow down.
Here at 4:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMlLPgAL2h0
I believe it was H.G. Wells, in his A Story of the Days to Come (1897) and When the Sleeper Wakes (1899).
Back in the heyday there was this idea of the arcology where a group of people had it with their government and made their own city-utopia which would rule itself.
Very often in those they featured technology like the staggered automated walkways for transporting people around, etc.
I think about this every time I get on a moving walkway and wish it had a few more speeds.
I think about:
https://m.soundcloud.com/thomas-dolby-official/pedestrian-wa...
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?
Larry Niven called them slidewalks and I've always been sorry this terminology never caught on.
The things I took away from reading Niven was transfer booths. The world has homogenized because information and people were transmitted instantly one from corner of the globe to another.
Ooohhh boy.
I loved the conservation of momentum "hack" for those teleportation booths. Go on, everyone who hasn't read it, see if you can guess how he dealt with that.
I love the ring world series until all the furry porn. He really should've stopped before coming up with rishing.
If you want to see this idea taken to the next level, you should read Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos. ;)
I have a tattoo of the tree ship yggdrasill.
The consul's tale should be required reading for anyone working in the tech field.
I consider the whole Cantos as a great book on ethics and empathy.
Funnily, every syncthing node on my network has a Farcaster folder.
Maybe I should read it again sometime.
In the UK, Singapore and maybe other countries with British influence, they use the word travelator, which I find quite cool as well.
Just like an escalator, but without the escalation!
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.
Pedestrians would likely not be hit, because few would want to walk there with a 75mph headwind in the first place.
The headwind wouldn’t be that bad because the people ahead of you are dragging some air with them.
Now I want to learn to use the CFD kit and figure out what it’d be.
Assuming that these terrorists are relatively fast runners, being in good shape, and they decide to exit the walkways on the other side, how far on the other side will they be in relation to the nail rain on s-75 they caused.
Two planes are headed towards new york. The first is descending into the city at 805 miles per hour. The second 846 miles per…
given these facts that I have already laid out, which terrorist has the blue handlebar mustache?
what color was the bike the ape was riding, when the terrorist with the blue handlebar threw his nails?
The North Pole.
Compared to doing that from a moving car?
Everybody carries a gun in Heinlein stories, so those terrorists will be quickly dealt with by armed citizens, thus confirming the superiority of Libertarianism.
In 1940 when he wrote this Heinlein was a New Deal Democrat supporter of Franklin Roosevelt. He was an active progressive who had recently worked on Upton Sinclair’s socialist “End Poverty in California” campaign. His libertarian shift was twenty years in the future, in his fifties.
Those people were "everyone's self-sufficient, so only a few people down on their luck need the state" folk. They didn't realise that loads of people wouldn't be like that if they didn't have to be.
Heinlein's alleged libertarian shift. In the 1940s Heinlein was mentioned as a Social Credit supporter which implied he was always on the libertarian side of Socialism. Social Credit was the American party killed/disrupted by the red scare that believed in a UBI and universal health care. His posthumous published but first written novel "For Us, The Living" is even a wonderfully naive paean to UBI and credits a Social Credit party for its enactment and ensuing utopia.
Heinlein formally disowned some of those ideas, but did so under the duress of the McCarthy era and the Red Scare. Yet he also kept writing about them, just somewhat cloaked. Both "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" are some of the most Socialist books I've ever read, if you assume the first person narrators are for the most part bloviating Vonnegut-esque patsies (rather than the author stand-ins they are often read to be; Heinlein seemed to clever for that). "Stranger in a Strange Land" is entirely about community effort and Socialism. It contrasts interestingly with "For Us, The Living" in part because cynicism seems to have been the big shift and Heinlein can no longer imagine America leading the charge towards Socialism and invents a dead Martian race to do it. "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is often credited as a deeply Libertarian book, but I think a lot of that is misreading the narrative and not paying attention to especially the second half of the book, which is entirely about AI-lead worker's strikes towards the goals of unionization. The first half sounds like a Libertarian dream and the narrator character describes it in lush terms that make it sound so, but plot is about overthrowing that and building a much more Socialist Moon together. Heinlein even comments about that misreading in "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" which intentionally begins on a Moon like the one people reading the first half of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" seem to love, dialed up to 11 to better make it a grungy harsh Noir place for a classic gumshoe-for-hire to live, and eventually through world hopping the main character does happen to stop by "Mike's Moon" (Heinlein actually names his timelines based on the first man to step foot on the moon, I'm feeling to lazy to look this one up, but this timeline is also prominently known for a Moon AI named "Mike") after the events of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and it reads a lot more Socialist and lot kinder than the protagonist's Moon the book started in.
A lot of modern Libertarians wouldn't expect a crossover boundary with Socialism like Social Credit, which is one of the problems with claiming politics is a spectrum or plane (there are more useful curves where ideologies meet than that), and a lot of modern Libertarians don't trust ideas like UBI and universal health care and don't trust things like unions again this century (despite having past pro-worker/pro-union perspectives), so it is easy to claim that Heinlein shifted over 20 years. But also, if Heinlein was a Social Credit + Libertarian throughout his life, the rest of politics shifted so much around Heinlein that he may have stayed in exactly the same place and it looked like he shifted.
I think his writing certainly shifted, but I think towards cynicism and anger and frustration after WWII and especially after the Red Scare, not necessarily towards deeper Libertarianism.
I also think there are lessons there for modern Libertarians, too. There are modern Libertarians feeling receptive to talking about ideas like UBI again as something that can have space in Libertarian conversations. There could be room in American politics again for a party like Social Credit that can be a coalition between Libertarian values and Democratic Socialist ones. The Libertarians could find better creative allies than destructive tendencies of "the far right". Talking about Heinlein's books isn't a bad place to start those conversations.
Thanks for that scholarly and thoughtful comment. The intro to The Roads Must Roll is an example of that complexity. It starts with a labor union meeting arguing for the workers to strike, and then a counter argument that could be an unacknowledged contribution from Ayn Rand. And this was from the presumably progressive early Heinlein.
I'd like to be there for a debate between 1940 Heinlein and 1980 Heinlein. I wouldn't be surprised if that event is scheduled for the Howard family reunion at the end of time and Time Enough for Love.
Which, to be fair, is also a Socialist utopia couched into a lot of Libertarian jargon/perspectives (to well beloved to mock extremes such as the way that society handles, say, the "Extreme Libertarian" approach to the incest taboo).
This somehow feels like the horizontal equivalent of a Pater Noster elevator. But probably with even worse error modes if it stops working at 100mph.
There's one of those still in operation at the University of Sheffield! Pretty stressful. https://sheffield.ac.uk/efm/paternoster
They have an inner and outer set of moving sidewalks as the loading area for one of the Harry Potter Universal Orlando rides (the one in Hogwart's Castle.) It's extremely disorienting at first but they have lots of staff moving people into the seats, so no one ends up hitting the walls.
We were casually waiting in line for a while, then suddenly we were led into the area to get onto the ride and had a 'holy shit, they're serious about this one' moment.
Edit: the Universal Hollywood ride doesn't seem to have this (as of 2024), so I'm not sure if the Orlando one still does.
The slow strips on the outside moved at five miles an hour; the inner ones faster and faster...
Not good enough. The same strip should go faster and faster over time and decelerate near its end. It sounds impossible, but I can think of a few ways to make it work.
The naive implementation is a train: everybody enters at once at a fixed point, the strip accelerates, everybody leave at the next stop or stay for the next stop. I wonder if you devised a way to make people keep accelerating while other enter and leave the strip. Side strips at lower speeds are too easy a solution.
One of the videos in the article mentions an accelerating moving walkway: https://youtu.be/CMlLPgAL2h0?t=240
Wow, this is exactly the staggered-speed walkway system I once saw in a Philip K. Dick short story, forget which, but obviously it was written after this.
I love the kid who is hamming it up at the bottom of the frame. I've been a photographer/videographer for my entire professional career and have run into this kid many, many times. Adults exhibit this behavior too but it is usually much more moderated.
This kid had to know what a camera was, which end was filming (some early film cameras appeared to be simple boxes), and wanted to make his mark on the final product.
It’s crazy to me watching this and thinking that if that kid lived to 100 he would’ve died 30+ years ago. That unknown child will be forever captured on this film.
Every time I watch old films with children in them I always think about how they’ve been dead, hopefully of old age, for a long time already.
Not to be grim, but he was the perfect age class to spend 4 years in the trenches...
The French males born in 1894 had a 92% mobilization rate (those who survived infant mortality that was still huge at the time). In 1920, only 48% of this age class was still alive (the big three killer being infant mortality, combat losses and the "Spanish" (Kansas) flu).
See figure 2a in https://shs.cairn.info/revue-population-et-societes-2014-4-p...
There's a German black-and-white comedy "Die Feuerzangenbowle" from 1944 and most of the actors knew this was going to be their last film. They were drafted into the war right after filming wrapped up and all of them died, apart from the main star.
You may be thinking of a different film, as all the cast members listed on wikipedia[0] are stated to have died after 1945.
The trivia section of the German wiki page of the same film says there's a disputed rumour that the film was prolonged to help the young extras avoid conscription.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Feuerzangenbowle_(1944_fil...
Thank you for pointing that out! I think that's the rumor I heard...
> Every time I watch old films with children in them I always think about how they’ve been dead, hopefully of old age, for a long time already.
I've got movies (black & white, no audio) recorded on a "Pathe-Baby" camera [1] from my grand-mother and her sister, my great-aunt, in the early 1920s, where they're both little girls playing.
I knew them both very well, they lived through WWII in Europe and they both died old. My great-aunt lived until her 100th year.
Very few things are as moving as this little, short Pathe Baby vids I've got of them.
A few years ago we asked a little local shop to convert these to digital format and these files are precious treasure in the family.
[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path%C3%A9-Baby
Some guy smacks the kid with a light left hook at about 1:14.
There even appear to be two guys dressed in uniforms, chivvying kids off the roadway?
The article nicely points out that New York City also had an elevated sidewalk (or plans) in the late 1800s!
Here are the designs and sketches. It sounds so reasonable. I am curious why they didn't keep it.
https://culturenow.org/site/a5883d3d-b1fa-4cb1-a6ca-a3a692e5...
https://www.6sqft.com/in-1872-broadway-almost-became-a-giant...
Then the car industry got rid of the idea (along with the trams).
https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2016/06/a-city-of-bridges-...
https://www.nytimes.com/1915/05/06/archives/elevated-sidewal...
https://www.archpaper.com/2015/11/long-history-tall-sidewalk...
Wikipedia has a nice page about it : "Rue de l'Avenir" (Street of the future)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue_de_l%27Avenir
Scroll down to the photos and be momentarily surprised at the fact that some are in colour.
Hand-colored, "photochromes". One of them is in Commons category "1900 black and white photographs". Check out "autochromes", though:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Autochromes
Leonid Andreev's moody selfie poses amuse me. (Circa 1910.)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Autochromes_by_L...
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 after expansion of personal vehicles.
> 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.
Not the "last mile". The _only_ mile. Cities were so walkable that London had multiple distinct local accents because people were living their entire lives in one neighborhood, venturing outside only for special occasions.
This changed only with the invention of electric trams that allowed people to relatively cheaply move around. Technically, horse-driven trams were invented a bit earlier but they never got built at scale.
In London trains came in 30-40 years before electric trams. So trains were the driving force.
See the Underground for an example.
Might even be 70 years see the London-Greenwich railway for the first instance.
The early trains did not significantly change the situation, they were more useful for trade and long trips. They were not frequent enough for daily commutes for the majority of city residents.
London and Paris were real outliners, with the early adoption of steam-powered subways. Mostly because they had to due to their size, but it really was the tram that initially allowed the working-class city population to commute freely.
It's also interesting that it coincides with the significant boost in productivity, and also with general improvements to workers' rights.
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.
Rail can't take you to suburbs is basically the main reason this happened.
The suburb was invented by/for the train. We called the first ones "street car suburbs" for good reason - the rail was why they were even possible in the first place. Cars work better than rails in suburbs (no congestion) and so rails have mostly disappeared, but rails absolutely could work in suburbs again if we invested in making them fast and frequent (which is expensive so we won't)
Look at South London - train to suburbs is normal
Ever heard of trams and busses?
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.
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.
> but if you want an odd niche no small walkable area can support it.
You'd be really surprised. I knew smaller cities with shops dedicated to Warhammer 40k. [1] (Surprisingly, still in business :) )
> Even something like a guitar shop need a very dense area for people who live in walking distance to be enough to support it.
A guitar shop just needs enough people interested in guitars. Being walkable doesn't mean there's no transit. Usually, walkable cities will have a city center where the shops are concentrated and if the city is big enough, you'll end up with a bus station in the city center. In fact, the referenced city has several of those shops. [2]
This isn't a large city, it's around 100,000. It's also fairly isolated. Nobody is coming to this city to get a guitar.
[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/nzmGkPKBCJi9xCAb7
[2] https://maps.app.goo.gl/gB46tVVRa195NkNs8
My comments (this thread) were in context of 120 years ago when cars were a rich person's toy and most people lived on farms and so didn't have access to the transit that existed. That a store can make it today is different because context is different.
How many of the customers of the Warhammer store walked there from their house? How many came from a different cities because it was the closest store? The store does well because it can draw from a much larger area than a pure walking (or the limited trams of back then)
Similar for guitars - I expect a city of 100k to support 1-2 guitar stores - but I expect the majority of customers are not walking. Maybe they drive, maybe they take transit.
> most people lived on farms
Not in the UK but yes in the US (in the 1900s, only 10% of the UK population farmed. Most were in the service industry and manufacturing). There's also a very different city layouts in the UK vs the US.
If you were a farmer in the US in the 1900s, you'd mostly likely ride a horse.
> How many of the customers of the Warhammer store walked there from their house?
Almost 0, but a very large percentage got there via bus and walked from the bus station to the store. For these older cities that's just how it has to be because there's no room for parking.
In the context of the 1900s, biking and walking is how people would get around in the UK, they'd simply not go downtown as often. In that city in particular there are a TON of old walking trails from the outskirts to town center. I know because I walked them.
You might think "Well, it's a 1 or 2 miles away, that's just too far" but honestly when all you are used to is walking it's not. It was just more expected that taking an hour long walk happens.
> How many came from a different cities because it was the closest store?
For that city, almost 0. It's way too isolated. Even today in england you'll find a lot of people that very rarely leave the city they were born in.
> but I expect the majority of customers are not walking. Maybe they drive, maybe they take transit.
Most of it will be park and walk. You are correct in assuming that they'll likely take transit or drive to a closer location. However, because not every store has parking like the US, it's most likely that they'll have to walk some distance to and from the store however they decide to get there.
If you click around the shrewsbury city in google earth street view, what you'll notice is very few cars in the city center and a lot of people walking around.
I live in a city of about 160k inhabitants. I live about 2 kilometers away from the hypercenter. A half-hour walk, which I wouldn't consider "walking distance".
Most of the city center is inaccessible by car. Parking your car is expensive, driving is discouraged.
Removing cars means there's more space for people. It means it's safer, quieter. I'm not in mortal panic if my 4 years old drops my hand. It means the bus isn't stuck in traffic, and is therefore really fast. It's the most vibrant place I've ever lived in. It's full of life and energy.
The city is full of small, independent shops.
A boardgames café:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Boardroom/@52.3864335,...
A guitar shop:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Alphenaar+Muziekhandel/@52...
A tabletop store, hosting MTG tournaments on a regular basis:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tabletop+Kingdom+Haarlem/@...
A store fully dedicated to expensive collectibles:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Past+Joys/@52.3798456,4.63...
There's a ton of small shops, whose names I can't remember, that I only discovered because I happened to walk past them. This creates a positive feedback loop. It's rewarding to just wander about, because you may discover something.
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)
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.
That is the opposite brcayse infrastructure to move and park cars occupy an awful lot of space that kill density.
It reminded me of those Asimov worlds where everything moves by machine and nobody really walks anymore. It sounds futuristic, but also a bit depressing. Sure, it’s more efficient but life feels flatter somehow.
I like that the fence moves with it. It seems like more of a complete vision than the moving sidewalks we have today, which always look like they were just dropped into a hallway.
We also seem to be unable to perfectly match food and hand speed these days. I’m not sure if this is a “feature” somehow, but it bothers me a lot. They didn’t seem to have this issue with the floor and fence, as far as I could tell.
That’s because the systems are designed to be dropped into a hallway. In modern moving walkways and escalators, the treads and handrail belt return on the underside.
The system used in Paris requires a giant bulb shape to turn around the fence, which is generally a lot harder and more expensive to accommodate.
I believe it's to allow room for the handrail belt to wear down, which brings its speed closer to the stairs until it starts de-syncing in the opposite direction. If it started perfectly, you'd have to replace the belt more frequently to maintain the same level of tolerance.
If I’m understanding what you’re saying, couldn’t that be solved with some kind of belt tensioner?
According to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ8ehplVFp4&t=636 the handrail is driven by a friction wheel that wears out over time, so its diameter gradually decreases and the handrail speed slows down (until it gets too out of sync, and the friction wheel is replaced).
So when it’s new it feels broken, the friction wheel wears until it works properly for a period of time, and then it feels broken again, so they replace the wheel with on that goes back to making it still feel broken and start the cycle again. How frustrating.
That’s the case for many/most mechanical assemblies with wear parts.
I installed a new steering box in my Jeep a few years ago - or at least, I think that’s the name of the component, but it seems wrong to my ear. The part that converts rotational motion of the steering wheel into linear motion in the steering components for the front wheels.
Anyhow, it was very tight. Not only was there no play, but I could tell it was taxing my power steering system more than normal. It took about a year for that to level out, and another 2-3 years for it to feel “normal” again. Another ~5 years and it would have exhibited perceptible “play” in the steering.
I wonder why they can't just use a toothed belt.
Because you'd have teeth rubbing out all through the course, which would eat them through very quickly, or you'd have to add toothed rollers throughout the course which would increase complexity tremendously.
If I were designing it and wanted to extend the maintenance interval, I think I’d use something like a CVT for a tensioner. The drive pulley would wear as normal, and the tensioner would be of a harder material and cone-shaped. As the drive pulley wears, the tensioner slides toward the large end so that the diameter of the drive pulley and the diameter of the section of the tensioner in contact with the belt remains a consistent value.
You could probably use a roller on the back side of the drive pulley to automatically adjust it, too. No electromechanical stuff needed.
Oh, and add a “squealer” - a piece of metal that makes an awful racket once the drive pulley wears down to a critical point, prompting those responsible that it should be replaced before it begins to induce unacceptable wear on the belt itself.
In Hong Kong, public outdoor escalators like the Central–Mid-Levels Escalator are a big part of public transport. They go one way - down from 6am-10am, otherwise up. They’ve regenerated/gentrified a whole area of town that was previously hard to get to. Few cars = people travel differently.
Modern urban car infrastructure is neither space- nor energy-efficient, but urban planning is long-term, and decisions shift all efficiency considerations in the long-term in a way that's hard to undo.
For example, transportation of people with the modern extensive net of streets would be most convenient and efficient if there was some kind of public transportation in small buses, available on demand and price being determined by regular market mechanisms. The difference between what I imagine and things like Uber would be a strong integration with existing train and bus lines, and public funding and legislation. Maybe self-driving will get us there, but there are also many political hurdles that make the less efficient option (high coefficient of cars pp) more attractive than the alternative that could provide better efficiency (and, ideally, also great user experience).
On demand is bad! People have places to be and they need to be able to depend on arriving on time. on demand means they can't be sure when the transport will detour to pick someone else up thus making them late. what we need are reliable fixed routes that are predictable.
making on denand reliable means that there are more vehicles driving around than we now have cars - as empty vehicles reposition just in case someone else wants to go someplace right after you.
> making on denand reliable means that there are more vehicles driving around than we now have cars - as empty vehicles reposition just in case someone else wants to go someplace right after you.
I was explicitly refering to buses because of that, or had in mind something like modern IT plus ride sharing: to use cars more efficiently.
And, in opposition to the other comment thread, my opinion is that this would improve the quality of life for people in the long-term (in urban areas, even in the relatively short term).
But without FSD, it requires drivers, so it requires more complex considerations than "just" directing cars to where there needed.
At this point, the discussion becomes tiresome and political.
But to me, the convenience of personally owned vehicles combined with the public infrastructure needed for them is inefficient in a way that affects people negatively in urban spaces.
"Space efficiency" to me would also mean to stop making life worse for people who, for whatever reason, happen to be outside but not in a car or, god forbid, need to get to places without owning a car.
I'm not dreaming of a world without cars, but I detest the concrete wasteland that I have to live in for having destroyed quality of life in favor of an excess of parking and driving areas. So I'd certainly like a world with way fewer cars and certainly I am against further increasing excess cars per person. But, like I said, to use cars efficiently, there needs to be a consensus.
Because cars require public space, and lots of it.
Efficiency should not be pursued to the exclusion of everything else. As the article itself says:
transportation should be about more than just getting from A to B; it should be a pleasure as well
I would not deny this, and I don't judge people for enjoying to drive. It doesn't prevent me from thinking about alternative worlds / cities though, or in this case, just a stronger focus on establishing public car-based transportation (such as buses), in addition to train lines, which take very long to be built or are currently lacking space to be built altogether, where they would be most needed.
There is absolutely nothing less pleasing than sitting in traffic in a major North American city with aggressive drivers all around you constantly breaking laws because they think they are more important than everyone else.
In contrast European trains are down right relaxing.
Until you see the expected delay going up and you have to start doing the maths of whether you can run from X to Y in under a minute, frantically googling for a second connection and how much a taxi would cost.. (my DB experience since I usually travel by train for flights)
googling? how about just letting your app (e.g. db, öffi, ...) show all connections to the target form the updated place.
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.
Even with a job I'd rather spend an hour on a train than 35 minutes in LA traffic. (30 minutes... I guess I'd prefer the stress + a little more time for breakfast. But I'd put a 2x multiplier on not having to drive myself)
Your goal is still being there though, not riding the train. After a few trips you have seen the scenery out the window and just want the trip over with (though maybe you can enjoy the book you are reading most days or whatever you are doing and call it relaxation)
Reading a book is being productive. You can also write, work, or nap. In contrast driving is the biggest waste of time in a persons life. I feel so strongly about this that I’d accept a vastly smaller house just to minimize time travelling. Second best to that is not driving so that I can make use of my time.
What I can't do is start making supper for my family. I can't play games with my family. I can't practice my drums. I can't make chips on my lathe. There is a very long list of things people want to do in life that cannot be done. If what you happen to want to do at the moment is something you can do on transit good for you - but for many they are doing that as a second best because they can't do whatever it is they want to do.
Time matters in the above. If your trip is 15-20 minutes time to unwind seems to be universal and so almost nobody really has anything they want to do. If you trip if an hour that is cutting into other things in life. (Note that I didn't mention how you take the trip in this part, people who drive fast the same time concerns for longer trips)
I ride the train kind of recreationally. Not just to ride it but to go into town, have a coffee and check the scene, then go back, so basically recreational.
I think a lot of the non rush hour usage is like that.
The train itself is pleasant off peak - table, wifi, I drink coffee and websurf. It's a bit squished in during rush hour though.
Having spent lots of time in LA traffic, I'd be surprised if an hour on a train didn't get you significantly farther than 35 minutes in traffic.
Used to take an hour to drive 11 miles down 101 to downtown vs 25 minute on the B line.
Hello, fellow LA traffic sufferer! I used to do the 210 to the 2 to surface streets to Century City, and the 210 to the 118 to the 405 to Santa Monica. There was no transit that was going to tame those beasts :-) but a commuter motorcycle in Los Angeles is a wonderful thing.
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.
A roller coaster would be fun. I've always kind of wanted a city to city flight that you could just jump out of with a parachute and land at your destination without the airport faff.
On the more realistic end of things, ebikes are fun.
>e-biking over a bridge, preferably at night — has developed its own ardent following. Liberated for the most part of any physical exertion, e-bikers can instead focus on the texture of the road vibrating up their arms, the wind streaking across their cheeks, the speed heightening their consciousness. “You do it in the evening, with the sunset — hell yeah,” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/nyregion/eric-adams-nyc-s...
Fun is good and all, if you enjoy it I won't argue. I enjoy a sunset myself from time to time. However most people are not enjoying in the moment. They want transportation only for the purposes of getting someplace so they can get something else done (or enjoy something else). Fun is good, but not everything is fun. I need to get home from work so I can get supper done in time for the evening activities (by coincidence I've been asked to make my homemade pretzels tonight - that takes 2 hours so I need to get home as soon as work is done)
I've had countless conversations with a friend of mine who thought not all things are supposed to be fun. Earning a living for example needs to involve a certain amount of suffering. If it lacks that quality he wouldn't be happy to be home and being home should be more appealing than working.
I ask him things like, what about working from home? That would be terrible! He replied with a sour face.
But the knife cuts both ways. If you hate the rollercoasters you will be so happy when it is finally over. The pretzels will taste even better.
Some will feel your suffering when they see it, some will enjoy seeing it.
Most people would have every other city in the world where they can be practical, sober or boring, depending on who you ask.
Most people can't always have what they want and they shouldn't. It wouldn't be good for them :-)
Lawsuit city.
For many disabled people driving isn’t really possible. Now they have to hop on a rollercoaster ?
High speed rail would be more than enough for me. DC to NYC in 1 hour flat. Philly to NYC in 30 min.
Sacramento to SF in 1 hour, which would allow for normal people to buy homes and commute into town.
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?
Spice is fine - but you still need to get places and that is the primary goal of most cars. People who have the car/motorcycle for fun only nearly all have some other vehicle they use as the "daily driver" to get places. I might take a train on a sunday drive myself once in a while.
The majority of uses should be for people trying to get someplace. If the trip is also fun that is a bonus, but if it is only fun but otherwise worthless (that is something else is enough better) your system won't get many riders.
I'm not sure, the thing is, a vehicle is also a place. I had a great time working for a company using camper vans. You get almost everything a brick house offers.
A lot of people have recreational boats. They go places but the destination isn't half the fun. With cruse ships the destination is perhaps 5-10%?
Maybe we got it all wrong. Perhaps trains should have lan gaming. Have some exclusieve game that one can only play in the train with some exclusive content for the specific trip.
One could also do exclusive interactive educational material. There is a lot to learn before you become a train driver, train manager, mechanic, engineer, cleaner, etc etc
That is great for the first week or two, and then it is common place and you just want to be there. It will be old faster if you happen to ride at the same time as someone who gets motion sickness. (or worse if you are the person with motion sickness)
As far as I'm concerned, transportation is solved. I live in Paris, there are 14 (soon to be 15) metro lines covering the city in a dense underground mesh, and you never have to wait more the 5 minutes to hop into one.
Paris doesn't have the best transit in the world, but they get credit for being very good and useful. Most of the world has a lot to learn from them. Most people don't live in places with transport anywhere near that good.
Don't get complainant. There is still a lot Paris needs to improve on. Please show the world what the next level looks like.
I think citymapper tried to execu this as a pivot. They had an idea to do it in London and other countries and did trial it for a while. Not sure why it (presumably) failed.
I'd note that startup money of the is much harder to get in London, so a US startup might be able to force the idea from experiment to profitability.
> available on demand
This doesn't work in cities. The vast majority of peoples movement are not immediately necessary. They can wait 10-15 minutes (or plan ahead) for efficiency. This also cuts down on costs for everyone.
On demand is bad but not for that reason. people have places to be and are bad at planning. You should be running every 5 minutes so even if they are running late it still isn't very long until you get there.
every 10-15 minutes is cheaper and so because of cost you are often forced to be this bad (or worse) just to be affordable, but it isn't what anyone wants and people who use such systems will dream of ways to make a car work where they are
I live in a place where transit is about every 10-15 minutes and I never dream of a car. I mostly thank god every day I don't have to rely on one.
ZZ Top's name before it was ZZ Top was Moving Sidewalks
Does anyone know why we don't have these anymore, except in buildings like airports and shopping malls?
Probably because for most locations, they are actually not very useful, but quite expensive and just cumbersome. They take up space, and create artificial travel-zones, and at the same time they don't even enhance the flow, because most people tend to stand still on them. For safety-reasons (and probably costs) they are usually just around walking speed. So it's overall just a fancy gadget which is only beneficial for heavy luggage or people with special demands. For those situations, we often have better and cheaper solutions.
Maybe because in airports people are sometimes required to walk long distances to go from one point to another, while in a city there are public transport, bicycles, taxis, etc. plenty of other options so walking long distances is usually not required.
I think moving sidewalks could be more suitable for shorter distances than public transport or taxis. In many situations, it doesn’t make sense to order a taxi for a trip of less than 1,000 meters, or to walk to the nearest bus stop, then wait for the bus, just to travel a single stop. There are many people with disabilities who may struggle to walk these distances and would benefit from such an option. Additionally, moving sidewalks could reduce the time it takes to travel short distances within cities.
The problem is cost/benefit. most places just don't have enough people walking far to make them worth it. They cost a fair amount to install/run, and so when few people use them they are not worth it. They also block people who are trying to cross the street (to get to the next store) instead of going down the street. They they are common in airports rare elsewhere - they don't make sense for most locations.
> most places just don't have enough people walking far to make them worth it
I would place them in the city centers of major cities, as there should be more than enough potential users.
> They also block people who are trying to cross the street.
Cities could be redesigned by banning cars from their centers, as is already the case in several places around the world.
Moving sidewalks are worse than cars. At least with cars if you want to cross in the middle of the block you might find a break in traffic where you can do it. The moving sidewalk blocks crossing the street (except at intersections) 100% of the time.
They're very unreliable because of the constant wear, slow compared to other modes, and dangerous for crowds and demographics with limited mobility.
Outdoor variants don't protect riders from weather, and having to deal with extremes of cold, damp, and heat makes them even less robust.
Filmed by James Henry White. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._White
Anyone have info on how energy-efficient moving walkways are on a person-mile basis? I'm guessing not very, but I'd love to be wrong. Taking a moving walkway instead of a subway would be awesome (assuming you could figure out the speed aspect, obviously).
Previous comment thread has an interesting conversation about why it hasn’t became a thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45793466#45793922
London had a spiral escalator in 1906, sadly not captured on film
https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/blog/spiral-escalator-engineering...
During the mid 2000, an experimentation in the Montparnasse metro station in Paris transformed a moving sidewalk in order to have an acceleration ramp from 3 to 9km/h. It was slower(most of the time) than the 1900 expo's 10km/h. And there always was a "slower" sidewalk (3km/h, the default) next to it. The goal was to go up to 11km/h (it did at some point). And yet it failed, and was removed 15 years ago. Only the slow options remain.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trottoir_roulant_rapide#/media...
You can see it in action here: https://youtu.be/FBzlEG3tMuw?t=399
If you like this kind of stuff I highly recommend
Expo: Magic of the White City. the first 10 mins or so are a little corny but it gets better and is super fascinating
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cpOQE5KJJds
1900s MPEG compression was pretty intense.
i think it's a reupload of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Edison,_Panorama_o...
which links to https://lccn.loc.gov/00694271 , but that does not seem to have a digital copy available
edit: well here's an archive but it's not any better https://web.archive.org/web/20231016184047if_/http://memory....
At 5m39s of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1900_-_The_Paris_Expositi... is a higher quality view of the walkway (plus thirty minutes of other sights to behold from that World's Fair).
7m20s of the same video clip features a clip shot of riders on the overhead converyor/walkway.
[the original film was silent, audio is faked]
Thankfully the second video contains a much more watchable film rip.
As usual, Edison didn't do it himself:
> Thomas Edison sent one of his producers, James Henry White, to the Exposition and Mr. White shot at least 16 movies
Asimov describes networks of moving walkways on Earth. There are several adjacent ones with different speeds, and the central one is the fastest. People optimize their journeys by entering the network from the outside and gradually moving to the faster inner beltway. And vice versa when they approach their destination. It's very detailed, quite realistic… and inspiring.
Between futurama pneumatic tube, and walkalators, are there any other proposals for infra scale "pedestrian" mobilitiy. Faster/less walking seemed like one of those things futurist urbanists use to waste time speculativing now, now we've settled on escooters and exoskeletons?
> 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.
There are at least some in the Paris subway, including one that went at 12 km/h but was decommissioned in 2011:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway#Trottoir_roulan...
That one was in activity about the same period I took the Montparnasse station somewhat regularly, and over those years I couldn't ever take it as it was always either broken or running opposite to my direction.
I do think a concept with parallel tracks moving at different speeds would have been easier to use and more reliable though. But it might not have been revolutionary/over-engineered enough to attract attention and subsidies.
Man, they should've designed it similarly to the video, with parallel tracks with differing speeds. But people's lack of attention would probably lead them to park a foot on each track and causing a tumble.
Speaking of speed, in the Stockholm main station the escalators go faster than others I've experienced... But I don't know if they've adjusted the speed since my experience years ago.
Decomissioned but still rolling, just slower.
> You've gotta be referring to escalators here. Never seen a moving walkway in a big-box store
I have seen some occasionally in stores, in or around Paris. They usually are on an incline to allow trolleys to be taken up or down a level. Or similarly outside malls to get trolleys to the upper level of a car park. That’s in places where you have to stack car parks instead of just having them sprawl all over the place, of course.
> or a subway station for that matter.
There are a few of them in Paris métro stations. Some of them in the London Underground, as well.
There's one in a Target in the LA area. I forget exactly where it is.
There's one in Sydney, from a carpark to near the city centre, of 207m.
Quoting wikipedia:
> The walkway has been the longest continuous moving walkway in the world since its construction in 1961.
Notwithstanding the people responding, yes, it is extremely uncommon in "big box stores".
Not in the US, but in Europe it's more common. Shopping malls in Eastern Europe they're not uncommon.
only those that carry the shopping trolleys up/downstairs, designed so the wheels get locked into place.
I have never seen a flat one in anything else but airports or connections between other mass transit transports such as metros and trains. Definitely not in big box stores as they would be inconvenient and slower than pushing the trolley in the flat.
I've seen them in airports.
i've seen them in a few metro systems, there's definitely one for transfers in barcelona somewhere
Somewhat off-topic, but why are all the men in the film wearing hats? Was this some sort of dress code?
Almost every man wore a hat until the 1960s. There's a bunch of weird culture about this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_Hat_Riot for instance
There's lots of pictures of the event if you search
I wear a hat outside. It makes walking in the Seattle rain quite pleasant, as my glasses don't fog up and the water doesn't go down the back of my neck. When sunny, I don't need to apply sunscreen, and the glare from the top of my head does not cause car crashes.
As a bonus, I can imagine myself as Clint Eastwood.
People were spending much more time outside and the roads were much more dusty. You need a hat to keep yourself from the sun and the dust. Cars made them obsolete.
They also make it way easier to great people even over some distance, without awkwardly moving your hand in the air or shouting and annoying all the others.
s/great/greet/
What do people downvote opinions over clothing for?
Men wearing hats is still quite common today. But the style has changed to baseball caps and similar forms. Most of those "dress codes" usually also have a more practical origin. So it's less of a code, and more a practical benefit.
If you are interested in this topic, especially from the US perspective, I recommend this book: https://www.alibris.com/Hatless-Jack-The-President-the-Fedor... . There was apparently significant social pressure for all men to wear hats until the mid C 20th.
Was this some sort of dress code?
Yes
The last US president to wear a Lincoln-style stovepipe hat was ... JFK
I like how people getting caught by the cameraman greet him with all little social niceties of that time.
It’s amazing how ideas from over a century ago still feel futuristic today.
At around 1.10 in the video something curious happens: a grown up "passenger"throws a young boy who tries to enter the sidewalk off it. What is going on? Were people more rude in those days?
> moving walkways, those standard infrastructural elements of such utilitarian spaces as airport terminals, subway stations, and big-box stores
big-box stores? where??
used to go between levels so a flat escalator, can take trolleys or there is a trolley chain haul beside. Bunnings (Hammerbarn if you must) have them. Giant tilt slab constructed category killers. Where sprawl is permitted they're a one layer building but in space constrained areas they have two or three (carpark under a 2 layer building) and these walkways exist to get your inflatable shark, chainsaw and bucket of chips down or up, depending.
Every Ikea I've been to has one.
I ponder this kind of things from time to time. This one makes a very enjoyable puzzle because it is extremely simply to move people on a conveyor or a rolling platform but amazingly complicated to get them on and off if you want to run it at any meaninfull speed, absurdly complicated.
My mental gymnastics is mostly trying to mobilize an entire city with the concept. I see some research suggesting there is lots of room between walking and driving distance. Bringing a bicycle also has its down sides.
Because getting on and off is already so difficult one tends not to notice the other problems with the tech. A simple crossroad is already a problem.
Moving fast is no issue for the more athletic passenger without luggage. It is also the most useless device to them. People with mobility issues don't have to get on but they do have to cross the road.
You would want to slow down or stop the surface, put a fence around it, you would want chairs, a roof would be nice, perhaps walls so that you can further control the climate. And then you have a bus, metro or tram. (haha)
One cool variation (not my idea) was to have a moving platform fromwhich to get in and out of a moving train, tram or metro. You could also make vehicles that connect on the sides. Those would have lots of fragile moving parts and potential dangerous situations if they fail. I see a night train misaligned with the station one time with the last door opening above the entrance of a pedestrian tunnel. A drunk guy almost walked out into the 5 meter drop. That seems preferable over falling between two moving trains.
It seems disney's HollowTile floor might be just the right interface.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68YMEmaF0rs&t=181s
That kid getting slapped on the face in the film! What did he do?
He was a child and probably of a lower (aspirational) class that the guy who slapped him. Children and working-class people having rights is a surprisingly recent concept.
I think he was spinning on a pole adjacent to the sidewalk.
Doesn’t matter, he’s dead now.
Someone else in these comments said s/he wonders what lives the people ended up living who were seen in old photos/videos. Your comment makes me wonder what life this boy (well, he's our senior) lived, and what his impact is beyond being a participant of a curious event in a YouTube video. I guess he had a paper trail, relatives, etc, but there's probably no way to identify him from the present (except if someone's grand-grandkid can give us an anecdote about his grand-grandfather seeing a kid being shoved at the moving walkways in Paris..
There's a good chance he was fighting in WWI being in his mid 20s.
If he survived that he lived through economic crisis in the twenties and thirties and ultimately WWII including occupation and terror in France.
And ultimately if he got old enough he could have witnessed the early cold war but also European economic bounce back and begining reconciliation between former enemies.
Could you ask him, deadbabe?
Which also applies to all history?
I remember reading about this in Devil in the White City.
Oldies were more futuristic than us ;)
Megalopolis
It was probably pretty loud
sad the compression on the video is so high
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