The first moving walkway debuted at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, in Chicago,
Illinois and was designed by architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee. It had two different divisions:
one where passengers were seated, and one where riders could stand or walk. It ran in
a loop down the length of a lakefront pier to a casino. Six years later a moving walkway
was also presented to the public at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900. The walkway
consisted of three elevated platforms, the first was stationary, the second moved at
a moderate speed, and the third at about ten kilometers per hour (six miles per hour).
These demonstrations likely served as inspiration for some of H. G. Wells' books.
The Beeler Organization, a New York City consulting firm, proposed a Continuous Transit System
with Sub-Surface Moving Platforms for Atlanta in 1924, with a design roughly similar to
the Paris Exposition system. The proposed drive system used a linear induction motor.
Unfortunately the system wasn’t constructed. The first commercial moving walkway in the
United States was installed in 1954 in Jersey City, NJ, inside the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad
Erie station at the Pavonia Terminal. Named the "Speedwalk" and built by Goodyear, it
was 84.5 meters (277 feet) long and moved up a 10 percent grade at a speed of 2.4 km/h
(1.5 mph). The walkway was removed a few years later when traffic patterns at the station
changed. The first moving walkway in an airport was
installed in 1958 at Love Field in Dallas, Texas.
Modern moving walkways generally move at a slower speed than a natural walking pace,
around 1-2mph, and even when people continue walking after they step on a moving walkway
they tend to slow their pace to compensate, thus moving walkways only minimally improve
travel times and overall transport capacity. In 2002, CNIM designed and installed the experimental,
185-metre (607 ft) trottoir roulant rapide high-speed walkway in the Montparnasse–Bienvenüe
station in France. At first it operated at a speed of 12 km/h (7.5 mph) but was later
reduced to 9 km/h (5.6 mph) due to safety concerns. As the design of the walkway required
riders to have at least one hand free to hold the handrail, those carrying bags, shopping,
etc., or who are infirm or physically disabled, had to use the ordinary walkway beside it,
and staff were positioned at each end to determine who could and who could not use it.
Using this walkway was similar to using any other moving walkway, except that there were
special procedures to follow when entering or exiting at either end. On entering, there
was a 10-metre (33 ft) acceleration zone where the "ground" was a series of metal rollers.
Riders stood still with both feet on these rollers and used one hand to hold the handrail
and let it pull them so that they glided over the rollers. The idea was to accelerate the
riders so that they would be traveling fast enough to step onto the moving walkway belt.
Riders who tried to walk on these rollers were at significant risk of falling over.
Once on the walkway, riders could stand or walk as on an ordinary moving walkway. At
the exit, the same technique was used to decelerate the riders. Users stepped onto a series of
rollers that slowly decelerated them, rather than the abrupt halt which would otherwise
take place. The walkway proved to be unreliable, leading
to many users losing their balance and having accidents. Consequently, it was removed by
RATP in 2011 after nine years in service, being replaced with a standard moving walkway.
In 2007, ThyssenKrupp installed two high-speed walkways in Terminal 1 at Toronto Pearson
International Airport. They connect the international gates in the newly opened Pier F, located
at one end of the pier, with the rest of the terminal. One walkway serves departing passengers
traveling towards the gates and the other serves arriving passengers traveling towards
the terminal. The walkway's pallet-type design accelerates
and decelerates users in a manner that eliminates many of the safety risks generated by the
moving belt-type used in Paris, making it suitable for use by people of all ages and
sizes regardless of their health condition. The pallets "intermesh" with a comb and slot
arrangement. They expand out of each other when speeding up, and compress into each other
when slowing down. The handrails work in a similar manner, and because of this, there
is no need to hold the handrails when entering or exiting the walkway. It moves at roughly
2 km/h (1.2 mph) when riders step onto it and speeds up to approximately 7 km/h (4.3
mph), which it remains at until near the end, where it slows back down.