A travelator and method for transporting passengers on a travelator. The travelator includes a plurality of successive conveyors arranged to form an acceleration section, a constant speed section including at least one conveyor having a constant transport speed, and a deceleration section. The acceleration section includes successive conveyors having constant speeds stepwise increasing in the transport direction for accelerating a passenger. The deceleration section includes successive conveyors having constant speeds stepwise decreasing in the transport direction for decelerating the passenger. The speeds of the conveyors in the acceleration section and the deceleration section are arranged such that the average acceleration experienced by the passenger over the entire length of the acceleration and deceleration sections is constant. Adjacent successive conveyors in the acceleration and deceleration sections include a common diverting element having a speed change point at which the speeds of the adjacent successive conveyors are different in the transport direction.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application is a continuation of International Application No. PCT/FI2004/000661, filed Nov. 9, 2004, designating the United States and claiming priority from Finnish Application No. 20031741, filed Nov. 28, 2003. The disclosure of each foregoing application is incorporated herein by reference together with each U.S. and foreign patent and patent application mentioned below.
