Admittedly an unequal pig, but I’m in this same >4:00 or <0:45 inequality as you are most days. OJ got nuthin’ on us.
We want to keep the cogs turning on time within reason. If I can shave 5 minutes hiking across the terminal by hustling both on and off the moving sidewalks I will. That doesn’t pay off every flight, but it does often enough when we turn out to be the long pole in today’s tent. Even if we’re not the longest pole, 5 extra minutes to accomplish our tasks depressurizes a lot of the rest of the crap we do.
I saw someone do this at Logan yesterday - but I have no idea why.
Almost all the moving walkways I’ve seen (except the ones between terminals like at O’Hare) just cover maybe a dozen gates. Not much call for a bus there.
And unless the thing is empty, you can go faster walking next to it, or trotting rather.
You kind of quote-mined your own cite. (Which as others have pointed out, does not support your assertion)
The full subtitle of the article is: "The moving walkways at airports are primarily installed to assist walking passengers, but there is more to it. "
(emphasis mine)
Also, I rather suspect ‘walking passengers’ in the article just sort of means ‘people on foot, not using shuttles or other sit-down transportation’, rather than specifically talking about people who choose to ambulate on the moving walkway.
I suspect it was something along the lines of, “I’ve been stuck in this airport for hours now, I’m bored as fuck, but there’s no way I can afford to get drunk at airport bar prices.” Might as well take an infinite walk that goes nowhere. At least it’s a good metaphor.
By “wrong direction”, I meant to use the walkway which is moving toward you, not the one that’s moving away from you. You need to walk fast enough to counteract the walkway, plus a bit more, to get to the far end. It’s tough to do on a down escalator, but possible.
Airports are interesting places if you aren’t just trying to get through them as fast as you can. I have a friend I used to drop off at Logan rather often. Sometimes we’d park and I’d walk with her as far as the security line. I’d sometimes walk a different route back to my car and explore some of the lesser-used parts of the airport. I found places like the chapel and the USO office. There’s one wall of posters of movies that were filmed in Boston.
When I have plenty of time between flights, I don’t use the moving walkways. I take the opportunity to get some exercise and stretch my legs between flights. (And I figure walking in the wrong direction on the walkway and using it like a treadmill would just piss people off). If I have several hours, I might walk all over the terminal before heading to my gate.
I only use the moving walkways if I have to cover a long distance in a short time. Like when my inbound flight is late and I’ve got to get from Concourse A all the way to Concourse F at MSP. And in that case I will walk briskly on them. But I don’t fault other people for standing, as long as they keep to the right.
Only because there are people coming down at you. If you get an empty down escalator it’s easy to get to the top; used to use that for my warm up at a race.
A little-recognized feature of moving walkways is that if they’re out of operation but not blocked off, and if the surrounding flooring is carpeting, not hard surface, then you can walk faster with less effort on the stationary walkway than on the adjacent carpet. And if dragging wheeled luggage the effect is even more pronounced. It’s subtle, but it’s real.
Even when the adjacent floors are hard surfaced you’ll often see a traffic jam ahead on the floor and nobody on the non-moving walkway. They seem to view it as a closed road or something even if there’s no barriers. Me? I think of it as an express lane.
When seconds count, or you think they do.
At least taking the “express lane” is quicker until you run into the back of somebody doing the same thing on the same walkway but at a sauntering pace, not a speed-walking pace. Typically it’s impractical to pass them while you’re both trying to walk and drag bags, which you could have done easily had one or both of you been on the larger floor alongside.
Miami has a plethora of carpeted walkways. With shitty aging moving walkways frequently out of service. And areas with narrow halls that clot with slow walkers. So I get a lot of practice at this maneuver. The shiny new LGA terminals have carpeted areas with moving walkways too. But theirs are brand new and extra wide. As are the hallways. LGA’s movers are rarely out of service. Yet.
I had a couple hours to kill at Hartsfield and walked all the way to the farthest concourse. I stopped at one point to decide where to go next, and someone asked if I was lost. I had a bit of trouble explaining that I was just wandering. I don’t think many people do that.
Kinds of a shame; I’ve run across some interesting art and architecture at airports.
This seems excessively harsh - we’ve had posters here point out how helpful these were when suffering injuries, or poor health. For that matter, at DIA (Denver International) we’ve got people who just came from sea level to a mile up! Do you think, maybe, perhaps, that they’re going to suffer and tire more easily and welcome such efforts crossing terminals that go almost a mile?
Or people that (as I pointed out in my personal example) have already been stuck in the travel circus for hours just getting to the airport, plus possibly other connecting flights and airports?
I don’t have a magical way to identify those that are lazy (as if that’s wrong), or are just damn tired, and I double you have the means as well.
So yeah, let’s all be a touch less judge-y and try to not make the horror of airport travel worse for anyone else if we can help it.
And what about airport staff pushing people in wheelchairs or transporting them down the concourse in motorized vehicles making beeping sounds? How annoying and inconvenient for the rest of us who must get out of the way.
It seems to me that the closest thing we have to Royalty in America are the people that get to ride in those little carts through the airport. Don’t you hate these things? They come out of nowhere. Beep beep, “Cart people, look out, cart people! Look out!” We all scurry out of the way like worthless peasants. “Ooh! It’s cart people! I hope we didn’t slow you down. Wave to the cart people, Timmy, they’re the best people in the world.” You know, if you’re too fat, slow and disoriented to get to your gate on time, you’re not ready for air travel.
Interestingly enough, he goes on to say:
The other people I hate are the people that get on to the moving walkway and then just stand there. Like it’s a ride? Excuse me, there’s no animated pirates or bears along the way here. Do your legs work at all?
In my travel last year, a month before I had hip replacement surgery, our plane landed at gate A #, and our connecting flight took off from gate F #. The 2nd flight was actually loading when our 1st flight was landing, and hadn’t even reached the gate. So we had to run across the airport. Hey Seinfeld! You try running with a fucking arthritic hip and an arthritic knee and a cane, toting a fucking suitcase from one end of a major airport to the other and see how fast you can be!
