Last time I was down there I had a chat with a BAA employee about the new moving walkways and their cost. He told me that they've been mounted above floor level so that they can be removed if they don't get sufficient use.
Are people now going to be "encouraged" to use the walkway?

That's interesting. Since the "one platform only at T5C" fiasco arrangement was revealed, I've thought that simply opening the other platform (as in the case of most similar transits around the world) and running the transit as frequently as possible during peak periods would deal with the problems.

It will be a double aggravation if it now transpires that the money spent on the walkway has been wasted.

An excellent and informative guide, as usual, c-w-s. Thank you for that.

I rather doubt that's why - cutting structure is expensive and painful, especially when you are that far below ground level because you are probably in the water table. Retrofit above the slab is always the first choice because insuring something like that doesn't leak is always problematic. (I work for one of the larger buildings consultancies in London as an engineer and we would have put the people movers above the slab unless there was absolutely no way to make them work otherwise.)

(Quote: "The automated double swing doors on the right open the route to the passageway. See previous posts for the details of T5B and T5A areas." )


Just for clarification, you do mean the Red doors marked " No Entry" ?

Thank you, that's a typo connected with my original photo which I then changed over. I will correct the original, so it is the swing doors on the left, not the red doors.

Don't try to go through the red doors! They don't lead to the passenger walkway below the TTS - they lead to the trackside walkway alongside the TTS which even staff can't access without a special permit. The doors are locked and alarmed.

That's not the case - the reasoning chance88088 gave is correct.

So tried the walkway this morning, only it wasn't that quiet because as I was first in the lift I pressed -4 but as the rest of the pax piled in no-one pressed -2. So the entire lift load ended up at the walkway rather than transit level. As I whizzed off up the walkway I could hear lots of confused people behind me!

This is so funny. The power of Flyertalk. Let's wait for someone to come on here and moan about how the transit has been enhanced.

My guess is if they don't get sufficient use they may turn them off to save electricity but keep them maintained so they can be switched on in the event of a transit failure or scheduled track maintenance.

The walkways should have start on demand, which means if nobody is using them they won't run.

Which is more or less the situation here. They run at a very slow speed until somewhat steps on them and then they gradually speed up over 5 or 10 seconds.

That's good news. The UK seemed rather slow in adopting this technology, many years ago I remember seeing escalators in Germany that started on demand (some bi-directional) but similar technology has seemed to only appear more recently in the UK.

I guess running them slower until someone steps on them is a good way of showing that they're in service, the escalators in PRG also do this.

Have you actually checked it out in the winter? If it's underground I would expect it to be a consistent temperature year-round.

I found it quite comfortable. Far more comfortable than the rest of the terminal which where it seemed the A/C couldn't keep up with the overcrowded conditions.