Is is the pervasiveness of the rat race, or of the obsessive laziness of humans?

I love living in a metropolis. I love being able to depend on public transportation. I love knowing that I won't be the only person interested in something. I love the fast pace feel of a city

That all being said, there are times that the city pace gets a little rediculous. I discovered yet another example of it today. In a couple of the metro stations there are "trottoirs", or what I like to call people movers. they're the flat escalators that are commonly found in airports for walking across terminals. Now, the trottoirs in Montparnasse Bienvenue are helpful, but they're not incredibly long; using them saves someone maybe 30-45 seconds, depending on how fast they walk. But, apparently, that was not enough for these high flying Parisians. They recently completed construction of a "high speed" trottoir that shoots people along at a whooping 9km/hour (everybody all together now "ooooh, ahhhh"), instead of the "comfortable" 3km/hour that they've had. The high speed trottoir comes equiped with transitional points, so when you step on, you start on the 3km and then bump it up to 9km for the bulk of it. The whole things saves a body maybe 20 extra seconds, or however many steps that would be.

Seems kind of pointless, right? I mean, are people seriously in such a rush that the extra minute makes a difference? I guess it could mean making your connection, which could loose you about 5-10 minutes...but in the long run, do those minutes make that much of a difference either?

Even so, I almost always use the trottoirs, and I used the high speed on today for the first time today. Not going to lie, the transitional part was a little bit like a ride, and I had trouble maintaining my chic parisian face and not grinning like an idiot.