Paris, spring 1900. A man wearing a bowler hat and walking stick steps onto a wooden platform that runs along the Seine. He doesn't walk. He simply stands while the pavement beneath his feet carries him forward at 4 kilometers per hour. Then he switches to a second, faster lane: 9 km/h. No internal combustion engines, no wheels. Just a moving sidewalk, a continuous belt that transports thousands of people a day without them having to take a step.
thomas edison, visiting the Universal Exhibition, points his camera at that impossible thing and immortalizes it. rolling trotThe moving sidewalk works. And it works so well that it could change the way we move around cities forever. Spoiler alert: it won't. Or rather, it will take 125 years to (possibly) be useful again.
Moving Sidewalks: When Paris Invented the Future (and Then Dismantled It)
THEUniversal Exhibition of 1900 had an ambitious goal: to show the world the progress of the century just ended. Over 50 million visitors They came to Paris to see electricity, cinema, and the first metro line. But the real star of the show was the rolling trot: 3,5 kilometers of self-propelled sidewalk that ran alongside the fairgrounds. Three overlapping lanes (one stationary for boarding, one at 4 km/h, one at 9 km/h) carried up to 14.000 people simultaneously. It was electric, silent, and pollution-free.
The system was simple: you got into the first stationary lane, moved into the second slow lane, then into the third fast lane. A bit like when you change lanes on the highway, but without having to move. Parisians loved it. Edison filmed it. Newspapers of the time called it “the road to the future”Then the fair ended. And someone decided it was best to dismantle everything and start walking again.
It wasn't even the first time
Paris had copied the idea from Chicago. In 1893, the Columbian Exposition He had unveiled the first moving sidewalk in history: 84 meters along the pier, with a 10% incline, and a speed of 2,4 km/h. It cost five cents. And it broke often. The Parisians improved everything: length, speed, reliability. But then they made the same mistake: they dismantled it.
For over a century, moving sidewalks have been confined to airports and shopping malls. These 50-centimeter-per-second lanes serve only to get passengers to their gates without too much effort. Useful, but not exactly the future of urban transportation they had envisioned in 1900.
Meanwhile, cities have filled up with cars, buses, and underground subways. We've dug tunnels, built viaducts, and paved everything. And we've forgotten that there was a simpler alternative: making sidewalks move instead of people.
The return (with some serious numbers)
But now moving sidewalks are making a comeback. And this time, with data in hand. A 2017 study of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne had already analysed the feasibility of a network of accelerated moving sidewalks (AMW) in a city without private cars. The numbers are interesting: A single 1,2-meter-wide moving sidewalk can carry 7.000 people per hour. A normal road can carry between 750 and 1.800 (by car).
Modern moving sidewalks accelerate up to 15 km/h, the same speed as average city traffic during rush hour. They are fully electric, take up less space than a road lane, and produce zero pollution. Their operating costs are similar to those of a bus. On paper, they work.
The researchers simulated an optimal network for Geneva: 32 kilometers of moving sidewalks, 47 connections, and 37 intersections with bridges or underpasses. The result? A competitive system Compared to buses and trams, it is capable of moving people continuously without stops or waiting.
The usual problem: costs
Installing a line of moving sidewalks costs as much as building a tram line. For a standard system, we're talking about €90.000 per installation, with maintenance every three months. Quite a lot. And then there are the practical issues: where do you put them in already-built cities? How do you manage intersections? What do you do when it rains or snows?
The simulations work well in Geneva, a flat and compact city. But try to imagine moving sidewalks in Naples, Rome, or Genoa. The construction costs skyrocket. Slopes become a problem. And they would be needed. completely new infrastructure.
Moving sidewalks: are they really necessary or not?
It dependsIn dense, flat cities where public transportation is already collapsing, moving sidewalks could work, especially for intermediate distances (two to three kilometers) where walking is somewhat tiring and taking the car is unnecessary. Studies show that can reduce travel times and free up road space.
In existing cities, however, the problem is always the same: where do you put them? And who pays? This is why moving sidewalks work best when they are integrated into new urban planning projects. Dubai, for example, is experimenting with modular transport systems which include moving sidewalks in the initial planning.
The global moving walkway market is expected to be worth $4,2 billion in 2024 and will grow 5% annually through 2034. However, 70% of these are indoor installations: airports, stations, and shopping malls. Outdoor urban installations remain rare.
Paris was right, but 125 years too early
Il rolling trot The 1900s car was a brilliant idea. It worked. It was efficient. But it arrived too early in a world that had yet to fall in love with the automobile. We've spent a century building cities around cars. And now that we want to get rid of them, we discover that the alternative already existed.
Modern moving sidewalks are faster, safer, and more efficient than those in Paris. But they still have the same problem: they're too expensive for cities already built. Perhaps in another 125 years, someone will say we were right, too, but too early.
Or not. Maybe this time some city will have the courage to actually try. And they'll discover that making sidewalks move instead of people isn't so absurd after all. Edison understood this in 1900. We're still deciding.
