If you haven’t seen it already, Melbourne Metro Trains just launched one of the world’s most successful transit safety awareness campaigns ever – that’s 11 million Youtube hits in 6 days! Whether or not it will reduce accidents remains to be seen. However, there’s one thing that’s certain, I can’t get this song out of my head!
I was recently at a friend’s 30th birthday party back in Toronto and I was flying solo. I was at a table of old friends.
Maybe I should rephrase that. It was a table of people who were old friends of each other’s. I was the odd man out. They didn’t know me, I didn’t know them. No big deal.
The topic – as is typical in congestion-plagued Toronto – shifted to transit and the typical debates over buses vs. streetcar vs. light rail vs. subway.
Now in situations like this I have to be careful. I’m not going to jump up and down with the word “gondola” frothing at my mouth because that would just be strange and awkward.
So I generally just keep that information to myself and instead flex my transit nerd credentials by demonstrating how Toronto’s new light rail vehicles and lines aren’t actually light rail . . . which is what I did.
Out of no where a man at the table piped up with this idea he’d read about in some paper (probably either here, here or here) about using ski lifts as public transit.
No word of a lie, he turned to me and asked “so does that, like, work?”
An hour-long discussion ensued with most people coming around onside.
Sometimes the most satisfying part about my work are tiny, wonderful moments like that.
Over the years at the Gondola Project, we’ve probably seen some of the world’s most awesome-looking and unconventional transit vehicle designs. However, when it comes down to the world’ most kawaii (Japanese for cute) mode of transport, the Hello Kitty Trams seen around the world is by far the clear winner (I challenge you to find a more adorable example!).
Hello Kitty Tram HK. Image by Flickr User Joseph Tse.
Milan
Anyways, on a more serious note, I think these Hello Kitty trams may make for an interesting case study from a transit planning perspective. If this cartoon cat truly has so much clout and influence, it may not be so asinine to think that an entire Hello Kitty themed transit line could act as some sort of catalyst to spur more transit ridership. Afterall, adding a little fun to public transport never hurt anyone.
And oh yeah, did I forget to mention, the airline industry has already picked up on this idea. And if you still not convince this could work, Hello Kitty jets have a reported average seat occupancy of 90%, compared to just 78% of regular aircrafts.
If you’re confused why some people are scared of the idea of cable cars and gondolas as mass public transit, you need only to take a glance at Hollywood to get a better understanding.
Take this unbelievably absurd scene from the James Bond film Moonraker:
In it, James Bond and his Bond Girl of Choice are riding alone in the Sugarloaf Mountain Cable Car in Rio. But their travels are aborted when a villainous henchman named Jaws stops the cable car with his bare hands (0:17).
Worried, Bond ever-so-wisely declares that he’s sure they’re “better off out than in” and proceeds to climb out of the cable car onto its roof (0:30), because James Bond that’s why.
With the cable car swaying precariously (0:45), Jaws snaps the steel propulsion cable with his teeth (0:51) thereby sending Bond careering over the edge of the cable car where he dangles for his life (0:55).
Jaws boards the lower cable car to pursue Bond by climbing along the steel cable (1:20) and upon reaching said cable car is shuttled up to meet him by another henchman (1:30). (Inexplicably, the fact that Jaws just seconds ago severed the propulsion with his teeth has no impact on the system’s performance.)
When the two cable cars meet at the midway point the other henchman stops the system (2:05) allowing Jaws to leap several metres from the roof of his cable car to Bonds’ (2:12). A fight (clearly) ensues.
Bond (clearly) prevails and locks Jaws in the cable car from the outside (2:59) using a locking mechanism that apparently didn’t prevent Bond from escaping in the earlier parts of this scene.
Bond then slides down the cable using a length of chain (3:12) which he had foresight enough to bring along with him earlier in the scene (0:32). Infuriated, Jaws proceeds to chase Bond down the length of the cable while still in the cable car (3:28).
As the cable car gains on the escapees (3:44), Bond senses the inevitable and jumps from the cable (3:55), landing in a soft field of grass and palms below (3:57). Jaws and the cable car, however, speed toward the lower station (4:02) destroying everything (4:05) except – presumably – his dentures.
Now I’m not going to bother going through why this scene is utterly ludicrous, because that’s obvious.
What I do want to point out is how the technology is portrayed.
Whereas Hollywood prefers to treat public transit as aninstrument of death and/or emasculation, Hollywood’s portrayal of cable cars is universally characterized by death and destruction:
In roughly 25% of all its seasons, The Amazing Race a gondola or cable car is featured. The technology is used less as a means of transport and more as a challenge or device of fear that contestants must overcome. The clearest example of this is in Amazing Race Australia, Season 2. In Leg 10, contestants were required to climb atop the Grouse Mountain Aerial Tram in Vancouver to claim a sequence of three flags attached to the system’s arm and one of its towers. And just in case you needed to ask, of course the system was in motion.
This is such a common element of film and television, TV Tropes has gone so far as to classify it as the Cable-Car Action Sequence, remarking how it shares several similarities with the so-called Elevator Action Sequence. The difference of course being that we have no shortage of film and television scenes in elevators that don’t involve people plunging to their death.
Not so with cable cars. According to Hollywood, cable cars are good for one thing and one thing alone: Killing you.
(Note: Like most filmed depictions of public transportation, I have virtually no recollection of any positive depictions of cable cars. That doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t exist. If you know of some, please post links in the comments.)
Superficially, the internet is largely driven by novelty and short attention spans. Sure you can delve into any bizarre niche you wish with as much depth as possible, but most people are just happy to discover that there are, indeed, cats out there who wants a cheezburgers.
That’s why link-bait is so important to so many sites: It’s superficial, ephemeral and fleeting – and it gets people’s attention.
You want to know why cable propelled transit systems have seen so much growth in the last decade? Simple: They have link-bait built right into them.
Telling someone you can use ski lifts as public transit immediately – and I do mean immediately – gets their attention.
The vast majority will ask a few questions (sometimes dozens) and go about their day. But then there are the ones who really spend some time contemplating it, learning about it and understanding it. Those, not incidentally, are the ones that matter.
That’s when the product stops being a ridiculous ski lift and starts being a logical cable transit solution.
In fifteen years’ time, that won’t be the case. In fifteen years’ time, due in no small part to the speed of growth the technology is experiencing, telling someone that you can use a ski lift as public transit will elicit nothing but a yawn. In all probability, it won’t even be thought of as a ski lift at that point.
Just like comedy and life, marketing is really all about timing. And with the rise of the internet, cable transit’s timing couldn’t be better.
In our ongoing effort to catalogue the best, the worst and the middling of public transportation marketing, we bring to you what is arguably the most “epic” bus commercial ever.
Most humans are social creatures – we enjoy the company of others (typically) and others enjoy our company. However, anyone who rides public transit on a regular basis knows that chatting it up with a stranger or sitting next to someone on an empty bus are pure violations of an unspoken set of social rules.
Another example: when a bus nears full, the objective becomes finding a seat next to a non-weirdo. And when the bus is full, well... stand next to a non-weirdo. Image by Flickr user fredcamino.
Believe it or not, this type of behaviour has actually been researched and has been coined, “nonsocial transient behaviour” or NTB. NTB in layman terms are strategies used by people to keep strangers away. Based on two years of study, Esther Kim, found that bus users employ a number of tactics to avoid sitting next to the “weirdo” which include:
Avoiding eye contact with other people
Leaning against the window and stretch out your legs
Placing a large bag on the empty seat
Sitting on the aisle seat and turn on your iPod so you can pretend you can’t hear people asking for the window seat.
Placing several items on the spare seat so it’s not worth the passenger’s time waiting for you to move them.
Looking out the window with a blank stare to look crazy
Pretending to be asleep
Putting your coat on the seat to make it appear already taken
If all else fails, lie and say the seat has been taken by someone else
—
According to the research paper, the reasons for this type of disengagement is related to: uncertainty about strangers, lack of privacy or absence of a personal space, and exhaustion.
While I haven’t done a thesis on this subject myself, based on my personal experiences, I’ve seen many riders apply these strategies. But what I find strange is that why these tactics are rarely ever used in non-bus travel. In particular, I’m referring to airplanes. Socially it seems to me (and I may be a wrong), but it seems a little more appropriate to spark up a chat on an airplane with a fellow passenger, than doing the same on a bus. —
So why is this the case? Is there is something inherently unnerving and disconcerting with buses? Or has bus travel simply been a victim of stereotyping for the past decades, which has caused most people to view it as a “lower” class of travel? —
Should this be the case, perhaps what we need a little more in our lives are these “Norwegian style” bus campaigns.
