Last week in British Columbia, a 25 year old woman spent 12 hours overnight stuck in an Excalibur Gondola cabin at the Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort. The woman was unharmed and the incident was chalked up to “human error.” Problem is, incidents like this will always put a damper on things. Anytime a city wants to...
Last week at the TED 2011 conference, Google unveiled their self-driving car. And while an interview and test drive with CBS news was both fun and informative to watch, the issue of the technology’s impact on public transit was never addressed. If the self-driving car becomes a reality in the next, say, 20 years, one...
Last week’s post about the Randstadrail and elevated infrastructure (both track and station) generated a few comments and a fair bit of email. Most interesting were the number of emails we received from people pointing out beautiful elevated systems around the world. Without fail, these were systems or installations we’d never ever heard of. With...
A quick look at some of the things that make your country/natural disaster relief work (or not): Haitian Earthquake 1 Year After: Haitian population: 9.7 million Earthquake magnitude: 7.0 Lives claimed by earthquake: 316,000 % of government work force claimed: 25 Number of refugee camps: 1200 Number still living today in tents: 1.2 million Number...
A few highlights from around the world of Urban Gondola Transit and Cable Propelled Transit (sorry, this one went up a day late – internet issues): China’s first urban cable transit system – the Jiling River Cable Car – is officially retired after 29 years of service. Wired Magazine profiles Rio’s Complexo do Alemao Teleferico....
Metrocable de Medellin, Estación San Javier in Medellin Thanks to Nick for sending along this link! The original, by Hermán David Muñoz can be viewed here.
At some point during any long-haul flight, the cabin crew will shut off all the lights so everyone can try and get a few hours of precious (and desperately uncomfortable) sleep. To help the process, everyone closes their window shields to block out the sunlight. But without fail, there’s always one person who leaves their...