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

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.

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...

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.

Wikipedia has a nice page about it : "Rue de l'Avenir" (Street of the future)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue_de_l%27Avenir

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.

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.

Does anyone know why we don't have these anymore, except in buildings like airports and shopping malls?

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.

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).

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).

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?

ZZ Top's name before it was ZZ Top was Moving Sidewalks

London had a spiral escalator in 1906, sadly not captured on film

https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/blog/spiral-escalator-engineering...

Filmed by James Henry White. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._White

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...

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.

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

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

Somewhat off-topic, but why are all the men in the film wearing hats? Was this some sort of dress code?

It’s amazing how ideas from over a century ago still feel futuristic today.

I like how people getting caught by the cameraman greet him with all little social niceties of that time.

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!"

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??

1900s MPEG compression was pretty intense.

That kid getting slapped on the face in the film! What did he do?

I remember reading about this in Devil in the White City.

sad the compression on the video is so high

It was probably pretty loud

Oldies were more futuristic than us ;)

Megalopolis

> 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.

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.

[dead]

[dead]