I’ve had a lot of support and interest since The Gondola Project launched a couple months back. As such, I’ve decided to dedicate some resources to upgrading and revamping the site. Namely, I’d like to see the site be a little more user-friendly and have a more customized look. So over the next couple of...
You can say whatever you want about Light Rail, Subways and Buses. We can keep that debate going forever. But when it comes to a transit technology’s saunability… Cable’s clearly got them all beat.
I’m in transit to Vancouver today to tour the Peak 2 Peak gondola in Whistler, British Columbia. The Peak 2 Peak uses an advanced 3S technology, whereby vehicles are supported by two stationary cable spans while the third cable provides the propulsion. It’s one of the most sophisticated cable technologies there is. It enables vehicles...
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post titled What Do You Hate About Your City’s Transit System? The post was meant to get people thinking about their own local transit system and to contemplate why they just accept what their transit is rather than what it could be. I encouraged people to email...
What a wonderful phrase: “Gadget value.” I just stumbled upon it in an old history text book and instantly fell in love with the term . . . Gadget Value is the intrinsic interest a mechanism generates totally separate from it’s use. It’s why we love cars, trains and any other mechanism. Cable has massive...
(Check out this fascinating video of a San Francisco Cable Car in action, days before the 1906 earthquake. Tnanks to Ron Wm. Hurlbut for pointing it out!) Lot’s of people have asked of me a variation of the following question: If cable’s so great, why did we change all our cable cars to electric ones...
I recently wrote an article for the Architectural League of New York‘s urbanism-themed website Urban Omnibus. The article, titled Off the Road and Into the Skies (click to read it), should provide you with a decent history of New York City’s Roosevelt Island Tram and some analysis of Santiago Calatrava’s botched cable transit proposal for...
January 28th, 1882 is one of (if not the) most important dates in Cable Transit history. On that blustery winter day, C.B. Holmes opened the first cable car in Chicago. It was the first time cable was shown to be economical in such a snowy, icy, windy environment. It was also the first known instance...
Your children and/or grandchildren will think it’s cool. You will save lives because you’re implementing the safest form of mass public transit there is. You will save your city money which will make everyone at City Hall happier. Your peers will respect you for doing something different. You will have fun. You like fun, don’t...