Horizontal People Movers

An interest in moving sidewalks and escalators took the vertical transportation industry beyond moving passengers vertically. Certainly, heavy-duty drum hoist machines had performed valuable service for the funicular during its decades of popularity. Even though the vast majority of those in the elevator industry concentrated upon transporting people and goods in multistory buildings, manufacturers, engineers and inventors in the discipline accepted the logic of experimenting with other types of equipment moving passengers any distance. Some recognizing the need for broader interests conjectured that "short-range automated transportation industry" be adopted; industrial lifts, direct and indirect action hydraulics and escalators to be in the shortest-range portion; geared elevators and moving sidewalks in the medium-range segment and gearless elevators with personal rapid transit (PRT) and aerial ropeways for the longer-range applications. Of course, some types edged into the realm of others as when a substantial stack of escalators replaced a number of elevators in a medium-rise building. Often one type of transportation generated traffic for another. When a moving sidewalk, or PRT, linked two groups of multistory buildings, more passengers were likely to be moved on both systems. As they reinforced one another, it often seemed practical for one industry -- or one company -- to be involved with the installation and maintenance of all short-range transport equipment. A modern-day example of movement continuity would be Atlanta where passengers may take an escalator or moving sidewalk to a PRT between airport satellites, use another escalator, board a PRT from the airport to a lower level hotel in mid-city, ride an escalator to the lobby, check in and board an elevator to a hotel room. An other-than-able person would substitute elevators for escalators! However, we are getting ahead of our search through history when diverse forms of short-range transportation came into being as separate entities, only gradually impacting upon each other. The manufacturers borrowed ideas about drive machines, controls, cabins, fixtures, wire ropes and safety devices from each other for many decades, all benefiting from the exchange. Through such rapport, each industry grew more knowledgeable about the others, making close cooperation on projects -- or even amalgamation -- possible in modern times. Let us become acquainted with the histories of the surface and aerial systems that moved passengers more-or-less horizontally, in groups.