Escalators

I love the efficiency of the Madrid Metro. It's interconnected web facilitates travel for millions of riders every day. Like most European cities, Madrid developed without significant long-term planning resulting in few parallel streets. The haphazard layout of every neighborhood makes public transit planning a difficult problem, especially when traveling overground. By developing a transit system on tracks under the ground, the Spanish capital's subway system avoids the zigs and zags on the surface and allows for an easier trip from point A to B.

This design requires passengers to navigate numerous stairs and because not everyone is fit enough to use the stairs most of the travelers opt for the moving stairways to get to the train platforms. Whether in a subway like Madrid or an international airport we have all been helped along by the invention of Jesse W. Reno. His escalator and its future improvements have eased us all to new heights. While it's easy to forget every time that an escalator helps us along we remember each groan whenever we have to walk up the stairs because the system isn't working.

Escalators can also be a lot of fun, especially if they have an angled metal cover on the edges of the stairs.  If you wear slippery shoes and possess a good sense of balance you can slide down the escalator. Just make sure there isn't anyone in front of you and beware of security personnel that might be monitoring the activity on the stairs via a video camera system. It's also a good idea to only do this when you are young and irresponsible because you would just look silly doing it as an adult. And parents, remember to not let your kids play on the escalators.

Of course the escalator led to the development of the moving sidewalk. I've always wished that we had the technology to take the moving sidewalk outside. I'd like to see moving sidewalks that ran on 3 different speeds side by side. You'd step on the first sidewalk that moved at a clip of 5 miles per hour, then you'd get up to speed and step onto the sidewalk going 10 and then finally onto the fast lane moving at 15 miles per hour. That would be the ultimate in urban green transportation technology.

If such a technology could exist I might be willing to walk to the office and give up on this cycling gig. Actually, I'm pretty sure the technology exists. What doesn't exist? We don't have enough stretches of straight roads in our big cities to make it worthwhile, because I don't think it is possible to make a moving sidewalk that turns. This entire mental exercise, however, reveals how lazy I truly am. I am so lazy that even with a car that I can drive, a bike that I regularly ride, I am still thinking of some invention that'll just carry me where I want to go.

Most people just call it dreaming.