We here at The Gondola Project love the Chinese Tunnel Bus™. It truly is the gift that keeps on giving. So when this came along, we practically fell out of our seats: Turns out the idea behind the bus was dreamt-up 40 years ago by American architect Craig Hodgetts. And while some of the particulars...
Scott W. sent me a link to the photo above of the clearly abandoned Okutama Ropeway in Haikyo, Saitama Japan. Beautiful, eerie and fascinating. If you’re interested in the Okutama Ropeway, I’d encourage you to check out author and photographer Michael John Grist’s photo essay on the abandoned system. It’s a stunner. Out of respect...
In 1998 a group of companies led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kobe Steel invented a new form of transit. The system, to be located in the town of Midorizaka, would blend aerial ropeway, monorail and people mover technologies to create something altogether unique. They called it the Skyrail. It operates at 18 km/hr, has...
From the 1987 Russian film Assa comes the peculiar scene below – apparently set in Sochi, home of the 2014 Winter Olympics. The song, performed by Boris Grebenshchivkov is titled Golden City (thanks, Google Translate!). Does anyone know if this thing is still in operation? Does anyone know what it is?
We interrupt our daily gondola broadcast to bring you this special report: According to Wired Magazine, the brainchild behind the Chinese Tunnel Bus™ already has plans to bring their awesomely entertaining and potentially homicidal transit system to the United States. The group has already announced an American subsidiary called “U.S. Elevated High-Speed Bus (Group) and “is...
This past weekend, the New York Times ran a story that contains a harbinger of things to come. The story, titled Google Cars Drive Themselves, In Traffic, describes how a team of 15 Google engineers are actively pursuing technologies that will allow cars to drive themselves. And this isn’t just fanciful fiction. The team has...
Watch the following excerpt from this 1958 episode of Disneyland TV and contemplate it for a few minutes: Now ask yourself: How many of these inventions and innovations did the narrator virtually guarantee we’d see in our lifetimes? And how many of them – more than a half a century later – have been realized?...
Let’s just say that a train that can lay its own tracks is pretty impressive. Not Chinese Tunnel Bus™ impressive, but impressive enough. I’ll let the video explain: Found via Gizmodo, The Presurfer and Neatorama.
This week Cleantechies reports on an innovative plan by the Paris Metro to use excess heat generated by riders and vehicles to heat a nearby building. You read that right, generated by riders. The essence of the plan is rather straightforward: Humans generate a large amount of body heat. When humans use underground transit systems,...