Moving Sidewalks in Airports 2

[Sparweb]

Seems every airport has them these days.
I think I just want to vent some frustration at something I witnessed / tried to intervene in recently.

After disembarking from a flight, I was walking through an airport's gate corridors when I noticed a commotion on the moving sidewalk beside me. An elderly gentleman had started to walk on to it, but once his walker was on the moving belt and his feet were still on the static ramp, I think you all can guess what happened next. Luckily for him the people right in front of him noticed his problem and tried to catch him. With the walker in the way they couldn't completely prevent him from falling. This was when I decided to try to get the thing stopped and ran over to the stop switch. Quite dismayed when the stop switch didn't work. I nearly broke the thing off the bracket pounding on the poor little button. I even tried the one on the opposite belt, to no avail.

My question isn't about the failed stop switch, really. I reported it to the airport officials and although I had to wait 1/2 hour for a public safety officer to come, it was worth the wait. It actually was a guy charged with the safety of these machines (and the escalators, elevators too). We talked at length, though we couldn't go back to the scene because it happened on the secure side, and I had to meet him on the public side of the airport.

My question is really this: Who thinks these moving sidewalks are a good idea?
Are these kinds of accidents common? Walkers, canes... what else can get people tripped on a moving sidewalk?

I rarely bother with these things. I have only ever seen one long enough to make any difference, between terminals at Heathrow, if I recall correctly. The more typical ones I see at little Canadian airports are hardly 30 meters long! What's the point?

STF

 

[JStephen]

They're no more a safety issue than escalators, elevators, and stairs. They assume the people using them are capable of using them.

 

[MikeHalloran]

I like them; they speed you up a little when you're in a hurry, and they let you rest a little while still making progress when you're very tired.

Now, in my state of increased decrepitude, I prefer the airline's big golf carts, when they're available.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[ScottyUK]

A few years ago one of the big European brands changed the design of what was arguably 'the' standard range of control switches. One of the teething trouble with the new design switches was that the contact blocks could disengage from the actuator head. In the case of the E-stop with a normally-closed contact that meant that the switch failed to danger. There might have been a recall - it's between ten and fifteen years ago. Just a thought - could equally just be down to bad maintenance.

 

[jgailla]

Sounds like the guy with a walker is an idiot.

 

[rb1957]

agreed, but shouldn't the stop switch have worked ?

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[JNieman]

The performance of the stop switch has no bearing on whether the moving sidewalks are a good idea. The old man should have never tried to get on it, unfortunately, unless he was able to hold his walker aloft while walking a few steps onto the belt. If not, then he would have been ideally picked up in a cart/car by airport staff and taken to his destination.

I like them a lot. They speed you up in a place that is notoriously large. So long as people actually stay to the side when they're lazily standing there, so that those that still want to walk on it, can do so.

I'd say it is much more dangerous for someone to have to jog/run in a crowded airport than to have a cordoned/walled area designated for rapid movement.

 

[natepiercy]

Please don't take away our Darwin devices.

"... I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?" - <xterm>

 

[ctopher]

The switch should have worked.
I like the moving sidewalks, but I hate it when someone runs through them. I had one guy hurdle over my luggage once.
It seems these days things don't get fixed until several people die first and someone files a lawsuit.

Chris, CSWP
SolidWorks '16
ctophers home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[mfritze]

I always really liked those moving sidewalks. Every time I go on one though I think someone needs to invent a nonlinear moving sidewalk such that there is a low speed at the entrance and exit of the sidewalk and a high speed in the center with continuous acceleration/deceleration in between. We'd have to come up with some scheme for allowing the sidewalk material to effectively 'stretch' (or interlocking plates that slip) to achieve this effect.

Whose in!?

 

[JNieman]

@mfritze I think I'll invoke K.I.S.S., here.

 

[btrueblood]

I had to catch connecting flights in Chicago O'Hare once, many years ago, travelling with then-recent knee surgery and thus using crutches. The connections, of course, used separate concourses of the airport. I had booked a golf cart on each of the 4 flights, but only received the service on one flight (landing in New Jersey). On the return trip, we were delayed on the outbound flight, and so had to rush to make the homeward flight to SeaTac. My colleague went ahead to tell the gate crew I was on my way, and I started moving at relatively high speed through a crowded Friday afternoon from one side of the frigging place to another (oh, while carrying a briefcase and suit bag). I made it, but not with time to spare, and the door on the a/c was closed when I hit the bottom of the ramp (not a nice feeling!); I banged on the door to have somebody open it. Forget about that happening today, I'd probably have been arrested and sent to Gitmo. Ok, yes, in those days you could catch a shuttle between concourses, but those rarely saved you any time, as they only ran about every 10-15 minutes, so you had to get lucky and walk on just before they left the gates, something that didn't happen for me; I made the long journey around most of a letter "C". I can still feel the chafed armpits .

Today, when we travel via that airport, the slidewalks make the inter-concourse walk a relative non-issue, provided you have some mobility. We've gone through there with kids in strollers. I prefer the option they give, and probably will (if I ever travel through there with a walker, someday, in my 90's?) give them a shot, safety E-stops or no. But, I'll probably also be that whacko grandpa with a motorized walker synched to my heelie shoes.

 

[LittleInch]

mfritze - they have - see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway

I recall seeing one on "Tomorrows World" - a long running science series in the UK - probably the one dated 1980s as I remember it had some sort of interlinking meshes which changed shape and somehow accelerated you in the middle bit.

Must be either very expensive or they keep breaking down as if they were simple and cheap you'd see them everywhere by now.

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[JohnRBaker]

This idea of multiple 'lanes' running at different speeds that you could move from one to the other is the basic idea proposed by Robert Heinlein in his novel "The Roads Must Roll", that I think I first read when I was still in high school.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
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[TheTick]

Most airports have courtesy carts for the infirm. I think a bigger question is why this guy wasn't on one.

 

[monkeydog]

When passing thru Chicago, and passing between "B" and "C", I normally walk along side the moving sidewalk, and end up being as fast or faster then the walkers on the moving sidewalk. But once in the concourse, I end up behind the walking wall of people that are in no hurry.

 

[3DDave]

At Lambert in STL they only have these at the end of what seems like a mile-long walk and they are 20 feet long.

I exaggerate the dimensions, but not the way it feels.

The biggest problem with them was exposed by Ellison in 'Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman."

Other than that, as long as the sidewalks have the side guards and tread fingers in place the old guy could have fallen, ridden along behind the walker, and been spit out the other end with little lasting damage, assuming others around him would not kick him on their way by and that toppling over was not a basic problem.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Yes, I agree that the St Louis airport is odd in that new(er) part of the airport is soooo long, and as 3DDave said, there's only a single section of walkway near the far end.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
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[Sparweb]

Shucks, John, I was going to mention the Heinlein short story myself, but you beat me to it.

The comment from the Tick is important - to paraphrase: "why wasn't this guy on a courtesy cart"?

Good questions. Didn't anyone offer one to him as he got off the airplane? Was one available at the time? Did he refuse? Are these carts the responsibility of the airport operator (in this case, Pearson int'l, Toronto) or the airlines served at the gates (in this case, exclusive to Air Canada).

I didn't think of asking about this to the public safety official that I spoke to, though on retrospect, maybe I should have.

Typical engineer's problem: I'm not elderly or frail or limited in mobility, so how can I think like someone who is, to design appropriately?


STF

 

[JohnRBaker]

If there was a real concern, all that the person had to do was request wheelchair service from the airline. It's not a problem and there's no charge, at least it wasn't in the single time that I had to use this.

I was flying back from New Delhi, India to SoCal via Chicago on American Airlines a few years ago. The problem was that earlier in the day, after a flight from Pune to New Delhi, I had an accident while crossing the airport parking lot where I fell and broke my ankle. This was in the morning and my flight back to the states was later in the evening and I had booked a hotel room for the day. I didn't get medical care, but rather just put an ice pack on my ankle, and later got an elastic bandage and wrapped it tight. That being said, I called the airline and requested that they provide me with wheelchair service, first at the New Delhi airport and then when I needed to get through customs and immigration in Chicago and to my flight to SoCal and later when I arrived in Orange Co. It was no problem whatsoever and the airlines was very accommodating.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without