18
Jan

2011

Do You See What I See?

Post by Steven Dale

Check out this.

What’s so important about it? Discuss.

An explanation tomorrow.



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11
Comments

Comments

  1. LX
    January 18, 2011 – 8:33 am
    I believe you will have to give us a little further information. Are we talking about the photo itself, the technology, the information about that photo? Well, - the photo itself: strange angle, bad colours ;) - the information: the resort looks nice and the gondola ride seems pretty long -> cold - the technology: it seems like a really old system, with modernized towers. Those towers also run two lines next to each other. Bingo? ;)
  2. Sean Turvey
    January 18, 2011 – 9:41 am
    I see a technology rated for 50 km winds that was being operated in 72 km conditions. I also see what appears to be passenger riding with a retention bar in the open position. This is unsafe and illegal in Maine.
  3. Chip
    January 18, 2011 – 11:21 am
    Having ridden that lift (Double Runner at Sugarloaf) hundreds of times, I can attest that it can indeed be long and cold. Barely visible above the lift is a similar one, Spillway, which was in the news recently. These "double-double" lifts were popular for a while in the 70s, before quad chairlifts, with 4 people per carrier, became common. They are frequently different lengths; Double Runner East, on the other side of the towers, ends at the base of Spillway, while Double Runner West has a midstation there and continues up to the end of the visible cut on conventional towers. Spillway West ends at the point where another wide slope splits from the Spillway liftline to the left (which is just above where the Spillway East deropement happened); it was added some years after Spillway East was built, and the double-wide towers continue above that point with nothing on the other side. I think I know what you're getting at here, thinking about this in an urban transit context. If two lines need to run up the same street for a distance, ordinarily that would put the bases of the towers in the travel lanes. The shared-tower configuration puts the bases in the median, where they interfere with traffic a lot less. Thu guy in the red jacket does have his safety bar down; you can see that his skis are on the footrest, which is part of the safety bar.
  4. frankie g
    January 18, 2011 – 11:38 am
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bmFXQEkpcA
  5. Jeffrey Bridgman
    January 18, 2011 – 4:16 pm
    Too high a density of gondolas makes the rider perspective look rather cluttered and ugly. It takes away from the view.
  6. Chip
    January 18, 2011 – 4:36 pm
    I feel compelled to clarify some terminology: a gondola is a continuously circulating ropeway with fully-enclosed carriers. The ropeway in the linked picture is a chairlift (well, two of them), and the things hanging from the cable are chairs (or, generically, carriers). That said, I agree with Jeffrey; this configuration is visually dense. However, gondolas have much wider carrier spacing than fixed-grip chairlifts, which would alleviate that problem somewhat.
  7. Jeffrey Bridgman
    January 18, 2011 – 4:55 pm
    Thanks for clarifying :) I wasn't sure what to call them, I was about to call them people-chair-pod-thingies, before I settled on the wrong term ;)
  8. Erik
    January 19, 2011 – 2:43 am
    I see a very under-utilized ropeway. Wounder if it has anything to do with the accident?
  9. Sean Turvey
    January 19, 2011 – 1:23 pm
    @Erik the photo was taken almost a year before the accident.
  10. Rose
    January 19, 2011 – 2:32 pm
    Erik, why would an underutilized system cause an accident? Wouldn't you expect it to be the other way around?
  11. Erik
    January 19, 2011 – 9:22 pm
    @Rose Yes that's what I was getting at, but if the photo was taken so long ago, as Sean says, then i must just have been a slow day.

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