A people mover or automated people mover is a type of grade-separated mass
transit system. The term is generally used only to describe systems serving
relatively small areas such as airports, downtown districts or theme parks, but
is sometimes applied to considerably more complex automated systems.
The term was originally applied to three different systems, developed roughly at
the same time. One was Skybus, an automated mass transit system prototyped
by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation beginning in 1964. The second,
alternately called the People Mover and Minirail, opened in Montreal at Expo 67.
Finally the last, called PeopleMover or WEDway PeopleMover, was an attraction
that was originally presented by Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company and
that opened at Disneyland in 1967. Now, however, the term "people mover" is
generic, and may use technologies such as monorail, duorail, automated guideway
transit or maglev. Propulsion may involve conventional on-board electric
motors, linear motors or cable traction. Generally speaking, larger APMs are
referred to by other names. The most generic is "automated guideway transit",
which encompasses any automated system regardless of size. Some complex APMs
deploy fleets of small vehicles over a track network with off-line stations,
and supply near non-stop service to passengers. These taxi-like systems are
more usually referred to as personal rapid transit. Larger systems, with
vehicles with 20 to 40 passengers, are sometimes referred to as "group rapid
transit", although this term is not particularly common. Other complex APMs
have similar characteristics to mass transit systems, and there is no clear
cut distinction between a complex APM of this type and an automated mass transit
system. Another term "Light Metro" is also applied to describe the system
worldwide. History
= Never-Stop Railway = One of the first automated systems for
human transportation was the screw-driven 'Never-Stop-Railway',
constructed for the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, London in 1924.
This railway consisted of 88 unmanned carriages, on a continuous double track
along the northern and eastern sides of the exhibition, with reversing loops at
either end. The carriages ran on two parallel
concrete beams and were guided by pulleys running on the inner side of
these concrete beams, and were propelled by gripping a revolving screw thread
running between the tracks in a pit; by adjusting the pitch of this thread at
different points, the carriages could be sped up, or slowed down to a walking
pace at stations, to allow passengers to join and leave. The railway ran reliably
for the two years of the exhibition, and was then dismantled.
Small sections of this track bed, and a nearby heavy rail track bed, have been
proposed for reuse. = Goodyear and Stephens-Adamson =
In late 1949, Mike Kendall, chief engineer and Chairman of the Board of
Stephens-Adamson Manufacturing Company, an Illinois-based manufacturer of
conveyor belts and systems, asked Al Neilson, an engineer in the Industrial
Products Division of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., if Goodyear had ever
considered working on People Movers. He felt that with Goodyear's ability to
move materials in large quantities on conveyor belts they should consider
moving batches of people. Four years of engineering design,
development and testing led to a joint patent being issued for three types of
people movers, named Speedwalk, Speedramp, and Carveyor. Goodyear would
sell the concept and Stephens-Adamson would manufacture and install the
components. A Speedwalk consisted of a flat conveyor
belt riding on a series of rollers, or a flat slippery surface, moving at 1.5
mph. The passengers would walk onto the belt and could stand or walk to the exit
point. They were supported by a moving handrail. Customers were expected to
include airport terminals, ballparks, train stations, etc. Today, several
manufacturers produce similar units called moving walkways.
A Speedramp was very similar to a Speedwalk but it was used to change
elevations; up or down a floor level. This could have been accomplished by an
escalator, but the Speedramp would allow wheeled luggage, small handcarts etc. to
ride the belt at an operating cost predicted to be much lower than
escalators or elevators. The first successful installation of a Speedramp
was in the spring of 1954 at the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Station in Jersey
City, New Jersey to connect the Erie Railroad to the Hudson and Manhattan
Tubes. This unit was 227 feet long with a rise of 22 feet on a 15 degree grade,
and only cost $75,000. A Carveyor consisted of many small
cubicles or cars carrying ten people riding on a flat conveyor belt from
point A to point B. The belt rode on a series of motorized rollers. The purpose
of the motorized rollers was to facilitate the gradual acceleration and
deceleration speeds on the conveyor belt and overcome the tendency of all belts
to stretch at start up and during shutdown. At point "A" passengers would
enter a Speedwalk running parallel to the belts and cars of the Carveyor. The
cars would be moving at the same speed as the Speedwalk; the passengers would
enter the cars and be seated, while the motorized rollers would increase the
speed of the cars up to the traveling speed. At point B Passengers could
disembark and by means of a series of flat slower belts go to other Carveyors
to other destinations or out to the street. The cars at point B would
continue on rollers around a semicircle and then reverse the process carrying
passengers back to point A. The initial installation was to be the 42nd Street
Shuttle in New York City between Times Square and Grand Central station.
The first mention of the Carveyor in a hardback book was in There's Adventure
in Civil Engineering by Neil P. Ruzic, one of a series of books published by
Popular Mechanics in the 1950s in their "Career" series. In the book the
Carveyor was already installed and operational in downtown Los Angeles.
Colonel Sydney H. Bingham, Chairman of the New York City Board of
Transportation, had several meetings with a group of architects who were
trying to revamp the whole New York City Subway system in the heart of town to
connect Pennsylvania Station, Madison Square Garden, Times Square, Grand
Central and several new office complexes together. Several of these architects
were involved in other programs, and in later years many variations of the
Carveyor people movers were developed. In November 1954 the New York City
Transit Authority issued an order to Goodyear and Stephens-Adamson to build a
complete Carveyor system between Times Square and Grand Central. A brief
summary and confirmation can be found in Time magazine on November 15, 1954.
under the heading "Subway of the Future". The cost was to be under $4
million, but the order was never fulfilled due to political difficulties.
Chocolate World in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Disneyland in California,
and Walt Disney World in Florida are among many locations that have used
variations of the Carveyor concept. = Other developments =
The term 'people mover' was used by Walt Disney, when he and his Imagineers were
working on the new 1967 Tomorrowland at Disneyland. The name was used as a
working title for a new attraction, the PeopleMover. According to Imagineer Bob
Gurr, "the name got stuck," and it was no longer a working title.
Starting in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, people movers were the topic of
intense development around the world. Worried about the growing congestion and
pollution in downtown areas due to the spread of cars, many countries started
studying mass transit systems that would lower capital costs to the point where
any city could afford to deploy them. Most of these systems used elevated
guideways, which were much less expensive to deploy than underground
tunnels. However, elevating the track causes problems with noise, so
traditional steel-wheel-on-rail solutions were rare as they squealed
when rounding bends in the rails. Rubber tired solutions were common, but some
systems used hovercraft techniques or various magnetic levitation systems.
Two major government funded APM projects are notable. In Germany, Mannesmann
Demag and Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm developed a system known as Cabinentaxi
during the 1970s. Cabinetaxi featured small cars with from four to eight seats
that were called to pick up passengers on-demand and drove directly to their
destination. The stations were "offline", allowing the cabs to stop by
moving off the main lines while other cars continued to their destinations.
The system was designed so the cars could be adapted to run on top or bottom
of the track, allowing dual-track movements from a single elevated
guideway only slightly wider than the cars. A test track was completed in 1975
and ran until development was completed in 1979, but no deployments followed and
the companies abandoned the system shortly thereafter.
In the U.S., a 1966 federal bill provided funding that led to the
development of APM systems under the Downtown People Mover Program. Four
systems were developed, Rohr's ROMAG, LTV's AirTrans, Ford's APT and Otis
Elevator's hovercraft design. A major presentation of the systems was
organized as TRANSPO'72 at Dulles Airport where the various systems were
presented to delegations from numerous cities in the US. Prototype systems and
test tracks were built during the 1970s. One notable example was Pittsburgh's
Skybus, which was proposed by the Port Authority of Allegheny County to replace
its streetcar system, which, having large stretches of private right of way,
was not suited for bus conversion. A short demonstration line was set up in
South Park and large tracts of land were secured for its facilities. However,
opposition arose to the notion that it would replace the streetcar system.
This, combined with the immaturity of the technology and other factors, led
the Port Authority to abandon the project and pursue alternatives. By the
start of the 1980s most politicians had lost interest in the concept and the
project was repeatedly de-funded in the early 1980s. Only two APMs were
developed as a part of the People Mover Program in the US, the Metromover in
Miami, and the Detroit People Mover. From development to implementation
Although many government-funded systems were generally considered failures,
several APM systems developed by other groups have been much more successful.
The first driverless public transport rail networks are the Port Island Line
deployed in Kobe, Japan and the French Véhicule Automatique Léger or VAL, first
deployed in Lille in 1983. The Vancouver SkyTrain system is the largest fully
automated metro system in the world, with over 60 km of track. These systems
are on the "heavy" end of the APM scale. Lighter systems with shorter tracks are
widely deployed at airports; the world's first airport people mover was installed
in 1971 at Tampa International Airport in the United States. APMs have now
become common at large airports and hospitals in the United States.
Driver-less metros have become common in Europe and parts of Asia. The economics
of automated trains tend to reduce the scale so tied to "mass" transit, so that
small-scale installations are feasible. Thus cities normally thought of as too
small to build a metro are now doing so. On September 30, 2006, the Peachliner in
Komaki, Aichi Prefecture, Japan became that nation's first people mover to
cease operations. Manufacturers
= Heavy APMs = Ansaldo STS
Bombardier Innovia Metro Bombardier Innovia Monorail
Kawasaki Heavy Industries Rolling Stock Company
Mitsubishi Heavy Industry Véhicule Automatique Léger
Hyundai Rotem = Light APMs =
Ansaldo STS Bombardier Innovia APM
DCC Doppelmayr Cable Car Leitner Group
Poma Group Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Crystal
Mover Parry People Movers
Hyundai Rotem Examples
= Urban transit = Brazil
São Paulo Metro, Line 15 Canada
Toronto, Ontario: Scarborough RT, LINK Train
Vancouver, British Columbia: SkyTrain Denmark
Copenhagen Metro France
Laon Lille
Paris Paris
Rennes Toulouse
Germany Dortmund H-Bahn
Düsseldorf Skytrain at Düsseldorf Airport
Hong Kong Disneyland Resort Line
Hong Kong International Airport Automated People Mover
South Island Line Hong Kong Ocean Park Ocean Express
Italy Perugia, Minimetrò
Milan, MeLA Line 2 - S. Raffaele Hospital
Milan, Metro Line 5 Venice, Venice People Mover Isola del
Tronchetto - Piazzale Roma. Turin, Turin Metro
Japan Hiroshima: Astram Line
Kobe: Port Liner, Rokkō Liner Komaki: Peach Liner
Nagoya: Linimo, Nagoya Guideway Bus Osaka: New Tram
Saitama: New Shuttle Sakura: Yamaman Yūkarigaoka Line
Tokorozawa: Seibu Railway Yamaguchi Line Tokyo: Yurikamome, Nippori-Toneri Liner
Yokohama: Seaside Line Malaysia
Kelana Jaya Line KLIA Aerotrain
The Philippines UP Diliman Automated Guideway Transit
Bicutan Automated Guideway Transit Portugal
Oeiras: SATU Porto: Funicular dos Guindais
Singapore Bukit Panjang Light Rail Transit
Sengkang Light Rail Transit Punggol Light Rail Transit
Changi Airport Skytrain South Korea
U Line Shinbundang Line
Busan Subway Line 4 Yongin Everline
South Africa Durban People Mover
Durban Transport People's Republic of China
Zhujiang New Town Automated People Mover System in Guangzhou
SK in Shanghai Republic of China
Wenhu Line United Arab Emirates
Dubai: Dubai Metro United Kingdom
Birmingham Airport AirRail Link system Gatwick airport Terminal transfer
Heathrow Terminal 5, 5B and 5C shuttle London Stansted Airport Transit System
ULTra personal transit system, London Heathrow Airport
Docklands Light Railway United States
Atlanta, Georgia: ATL Skytrain Chicago, Illinois: ATS Chicago ORD
Detroit, Michigan: Detroit People Mover Huntsville, Alabama: Huntsville Hospital
People Mover Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana
University Health People Mover Jacksonville, Florida: Jacksonville
Skyway Las Colinas, Irving, Texas: Las Colinas
APT System Paradise, Nevada: Mandalay Bay Tram
Newark, New Jersey: AirTrain Newark Oakland, California: BART to Oakland
International Airport Phoenix, Arizona: Phoenix Sky Train
Miami, Florida: Metromover, MIA Mover Morgantown, West Virginia: Morgantown
Personal Rapid Transit Queens, New York: AirTrain JFK Airport
Washington, District of Columbia: United States Capitol Subway System
Dirksen/Hart Line Venezuela
Caracas: Cabletren Bolivariano = Airport =
Many large international airports around the world feature people mover systems
to transport passengers between terminals or within a terminal itself.
Some people mover systems at airports connect with other public transportation
systems to allow passengers to travel into the airport's city.
= Rural and suburban transit = The Pillar-track Regional People Mover
is a concept of a people mover system, that is optimized for rural and suburban
areas with lower population density. The aim of the system is to provide short
intervals and appropriate riding and waiting times outside of urban areas.
= Other = The former PeopleMover attraction at
Disneyland, which ran from 1967 to 1995. The Tomorrowland Transit Authority
attraction, which was formerly called the WEDway PeopleMover, at Walt Disney
World The Hogwarts Express attraction, a
funicular railroad within Universal Orlando Resort that connects the two The
Wizarding World of Harry Potter sections, Hogsmeade at Islands of
Adventure and Diagon Alley at Universal Studios Orlando
West Virginia University – a Group Rapid Transit system, similar to Personal
rapid transit The Huntsville Hospital Tram System
connects different buildings of the Huntsville Hospital System.
Slope car, a small automated monorail found in various parts of Japan, can be
considered as a simple form of people mover.
In addition to the Las Vegas Monorail, several people mover systems are in
place in the Las Vegas Valley, Nevada. Three connect the McCarran International
Airport terminals 1 and 3 to its C-, D-, and E-gates. Another connects The Mirage
to Treasure Island Hotel and Casino. Two people mover connects hotels on the Las
Vegas Strip. The Mandalay Bay Tram connects Excalibur, Luxor, and Mandalay
Bay. The City Center Tram connects Monte Carlo, The Crystals in City Center, and
the Bellagio. The Minirail automated monorail at Expo
67, which incorporated track and rolling stock from the 1964 Swiss National
Exhibition. See also
References External links
Information on electronically guided people mover systems