Walking could be the new Luas

Why would you walk when you could take the car? For most of the last century the answer to that question was: you wouldn’t. It was a matter of logic.
We might, in our suffering, like to think that Dublin is unique in the gravity of its traffic problems. For sure, it’s worse than a lot of European cities in that we never cracked the public transport problem. And we’re mightily blighted by urban sprawl which makes designing public transport an economic nightmare.
But most cities, more or less, are in the same boat. A large part of their population is dependent on the car to get them to work or education.
And what is happening is that car speeds are getting slower every year because congestion is increasing. It’s now got to the point where walking is now competitive again.
But is there really scope for people to walk? And would it make any difference?
Well consider these numbers. Every working day in Dublin 33,000 journeys are made to school or college in a car over a distance of less than a mile. Can you believe it? And another 27,000 similar journeys are under two miles.
Going to work is pretty similar. 55,000 car trips to work are under two miles.
So walking, if it were a mass transit system, has the capability and market to shift a lot of bodies.
There has been a couple of developments in the last few years that might well make walking a mass transit system. This has been the evolution of fast walkways systems.
The first of these opened in Paris around three years ago in Montparnasse train station. This revolutionary system has the ability to move you along at 11kmph and if you were to walk on it at the same time you would be moving along at around 16kmph, quite a clip.
Of course, there’s a problem. In order to accelerate you up to speed the engineers used a system of rollers, each one moving slightly faster than the last. It works fine, as long as you have your feet on the ground. If you don’t, you’re likely to go ass over tit, as many poor unfortunates have. The result has been the need for staff to oversee people getting onto the walkway and the average speed has been reduced to 9kmph.
The new Pier F in Toronto has a similar system which moves along at 7kmph or 12kmph if you are walking. The system they have used is reputedly better at keeping you upright during acceleration than the Paris concept.
Nevertheless, even though these walkways extend only a couple of hundred meters, it shows that walking, as opposed to putting up massive expensive tram and train projects, can work.
Think, for example, if walkways had been used instead of the Luas. The average speed of the Luas is less than 20kmph and you’ve got to wait for it. If sections of walkway were built in 500m lengths, for example, it wouldn’t be long before a network could be built that would better replicate the journeys that people undertake.
Of course, it wouldn’t work in all situations and it would form a bit of a barrier in parts of the city but overpasses and underpasses should be easy to design as you’re only carrying people.
Remember, you read it here first. If technology can solve some of our problems then moving walkways have a future.