Heck, it's feasible now, but the power consumption and maintenance costs would be fairly insane compared to the plain old cars-and-roads solution. (How often do you see an escalator broken down? Pretty damn often.)
You see more stopped escalators because the escalator is the equivalent of combining the train and the track into the same thing. Tracks don't require the level of maintenance that trains do. Trains can be taken off of the tracks for maintenance, so you don't see the entire system break down when maintenance is done.
I use the rail system in Portland for transportation, and I can say that they fairly regularly have issues with trains on the tracks, or taking down sections of track for maintenance over a weekend.
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what if the subways weren't subways we know of today, but rather conveyor belt like roads. might be feasible if in a more automated future.
This is stuff of science fiction. I remembered Arthur C. Clarke for having written this, but apparently H. G. Wells was first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway#Science_fiction
Jules Verne did it before that, in the Floating Island if I remember correctly. Which is a parody of 19 century USA, by the way.
I recommend reading Wells' "When the Sleeper Wakes" - the description of "future" technology is fascinating (particularly the moving walkways)
Heck, it's feasible now, but the power consumption and maintenance costs would be fairly insane compared to the plain old cars-and-roads solution. (How often do you see an escalator broken down? Pretty damn often.)
You see more stopped escalators because the escalator is the equivalent of combining the train and the track into the same thing. Tracks don't require the level of maintenance that trains do. Trains can be taken off of the tracks for maintenance, so you don't see the entire system break down when maintenance is done.
I use the rail system in Portland for transportation, and I can say that they fairly regularly have issues with trains on the tracks, or taking down sections of track for maintenance over a weekend.
The vast majority of the stopped escalators I've seen are because some idiot thought it'd be fun to hit the stop button.
How were you able to verify this?
Perhaps he's the one pushing the button.
...as long as it's not built by the same people who implemented it at DFW. That place is hell to navigate.