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Comment by nvalis | Hacker News Reader

I love the concept of moving walkways on large airports and always wondered why there are non with multiple speeds like this one. Is it a security aspect?

There is however an accelerating one at YYZ in Toronto [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway#ThyssenKrupp_AC...

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there used to be a quicker (9 or 11 km/h depending on sources) walkway in Paris metro, but apparently too frequently broken https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trottoir_roulant_rapide

« Le TRR fonctionna d'abord à la vitesse de 11 km/h (3 m/s), mais en raison de fréquentes chutes de voyageurs et de divers accidents, la vitesse fut réduite à 9 km/h (2,5 m/s) »

From your Wikipedia page, it says it initially went at 11 km/h but was reduced to 9 km/h because of “frequent falls of passengers and various accidents”.

Alas, those have been drywalled over and closed for good at YYZ.

A real bummer, especially since it seems I have to traverse those passageways every time I return from the US or Europe.

Accelerating escalators are both fascinating and absolutely terrifying to me.

I've walked on the ones at Toronto Pearson before. I was a bit surprised the first time that it wasn't moving at full speed like I expected when I stepped on, but after that the second time I knew what to expect and it worked well.

I actually found it better when disembarking because it gives a better transition to the stationary surface when stepping off.

My dude, that is the coolest thing I have seen. The engineering and design required to make it reliable and safe. Thank you for sharing.

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