During this year’s holiday season, The Gondola Project will not be posting new content between December 24th and January 1st. Happy Holidays to all Gondola Project readers old and new! See you in 2011!
True story: While I was touring the Caracas Metrocable earlier this year, myself and my guide were joined by an elderly gentleman in our gondola. Via my guide, I asked the man how he felt about the system. Did he like it? Any complaints? He said he loved it – except for all the time...
There’s no nice way to say this, but here goes: Had the Metrocables of Medellin and Venezuela been built in a place like Denver, Copenhagen or Zurich, this conversation about cable transit would be entirely different than it is now. Cities would be building these things faster than the industry could keep up. We wouldn’t...
In his legendary treatise on industrial design The Design of Everyday Things, Donald A. Norman professes his love for camping gear as being some of the best-designed products in the world. Why does he think such gear is so well-designed? Because more often than not, the products are designed by people who actually use them....
I had planned a new Thought Experiment for today’s post, until I came upon this: The 8 Most WTF Ideas In the History of Transportation via one of my all-time favourite websites, Cracked.com. For obvious reasons I had to preempt today’s post. I’m quite sure all the transit geek’s out there will love it, if...
A quick look at some of the things that make your cities work (or not): Creative class: Innovation adverse Future cities: Inclusion 25th anniversary: Vancouver Skytrain Initial design capacity: 100,000 passengers Passengers per day in 1985: 60,000 2010: 240,000 Cost: $38 million/km CDN Cost of Hong Kong’s Kwun Tong subway line: $280 million/km USD Cost...
A few highlights from around the world of Urban Gondolas and Cable Propelled Transit: According to a report from Rio Times Online, it appears that Rio is planning to build a second Urban Gondola system. This system would serve the Rocinha favela and should connect with a future metro line. This is a major development...
The new Roosevelt Island Tram (RIT) is likely to generate renewed interest in cable transit and urban gondolas. What it may also do is demonstrate to the wider transit planning community that Cable Propelled Transit is an “open” platform and not (necessarily) subject to the issue of proprietary technology. Let me explain: The Roosevelt Island...
A quick thought: The cable industry positions themselves as Ski Lift manufacturers who sometimes build transit. Why not flip that around? Why not be Transit Builders that happen to provide transportation to a whole host of markets, including ski hills? There’s a difference there. It’s subtle, but it’s there.
Young people and students are the lifeblood of any new idea. Students talk, socialize and are generally more willing to wade around into the unfamiliar and unknown. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Facebook was invented by a 20 year old. It’s also no surprise that a large percentage of email I receive regarding cable transit...