Post by nickchu

Prefab Wooden Summit Station. Image from Treehugger.

A quick look at some of the things that happened this week in the world of urban gondolas, cable cars and cable propelled transit:

Cable Car Proposed to Solve Last Mile Problem at Large Railway Stations (Paris, France)
It’s only a 1km between Paris’s Gare de Lyon (90,000,000 annual passengers) and the Gare d’Austerlitz (30,000,000 annual passengers) two of the metropolis’s biggest train stations — about a 10-minute walk. But if you’re hurrying between stations in summer, hauling a heavy suitcase, that’s a very long 10 minutes. So city councillor Jean-Bernard Bros of the RPG has called for a cable car study. Station to station, this system would cross the Seine River and over Charles de Gaulle Bridge.

Kolkata to See Aerial Ropeway Transit? (Kolkata, India)
Think your local traffic is bad? No wonder a local Indian ropeway manufacturer is working on a proposal with officials for an aerial ropeway in two sectors of Kolkata: Sealdah to the BBD Bagh area and Howrah to the new state secretariat at Nabanna. The system will travel at speeds of 12.5km, have 8-10 person cabins with an hourly capacity of 2,000-2,500 and cost Rs 20 crore per km (~USD$3 million).

Prefab Wooden Cable Car Summit Station (Toggenburg, Switzerland)
The construction of a wooden summit station was complete after its cable car helped haul 3,600 tons of materials over 1,200 trips. Built to respect local traditions and designs, the new facility was installed to further develop culture-based tourism in the region.