Patent ID: 7290646

Claim:
A method for transporting passengers in a transport direction on a travelator having successive conveyors, each successive conveyor comprising: first and second diverting elements located at a distance from each other, each one of the diverting elements comprising a first belt pulley and a second belt pulley, with a transmission ratio existing between the first and second belt pulleys; and an endless conveyor belt, the conveyor belt running over the first belt pulley of the first diverting element and over the second belt pulley of the second diverting element, wherein adjacent successive conveyors share a common diverting element such that the second diverting element of a preceding conveyor in the transport direction is the first diverting element of a next successive conveyor in the transport direction, the method comprising: accelerating the passengers in an acceleration section by stepwise increasing constant speeds of successive conveyors in the transport direction from a substantially slow initial speed to a heightened transport speed such that an average acceleration experienced by the passengers is substantially constant throughout the entire acceleration section; transporting the passengers at a constant speed on successive conveyors in a constant-speed section; and decelerating the passengers in a deceleration section by stepwise decreasing the constant speeds of successive conveyors to a substantially slow final speed such that the average deceleration experienced by the passengers is substantially constant throughout the entire deceleration section, wherein at one of the common diverting elements in the acceleration and deceleration sections the speeds of the adjacent successive conveyors are different in the transport direction.