Accelerating Moving Walkway: A review of the characteristics and potential application

Moving walkways have been used for people transport for more than a century. One of the latest innovations in this field is the Accelerating Moving Walkway (AMW), which provides higher transport speed. However, the application of moving walkways is still limited to short-distance travel up to 300 m. This paper summarizes and analyses the findings of a literature review on (accelerating) moving walkways, which aims to compare the characteristics of AMWs with other public transport systems, namely buses, light rails, Automated People Movers (APMs), and Personal Rapid Transits (PRTs). Based on the comparative evaluation, we conclude that AMWs can be competitive to the other transport modes. Hence, we propose the potential application of AMWs for the transport of people, i.e. pedestrians, over longer distances. Subsequently, issues related to the concept of long-distance AMWs are briefly introduced as topics for further research.