Earlier this year, I blogged about the new Skyride chairlift at the CNE. At that time I did some background research and watched a couple of videos of the old gondola ride at the Exhibition – called the Alpine Way – but didn’t notice any particularly special. However, I revisited this system this week and only...
The other day I discussed how modal choice often has less to do with the intrinsic qualities of a technology and more to do with extrinsic factors. Those comments caused something of a stir with people coming out saying a variation of the following: Light Rail is a scam. Light Rail is awesome. It depends....
Recently we’ve been receiving a lot of email requests for details about gondola and cable car transit technology. Often, the requests have been coming from university students asking for help with assigned projects. The pace of requests have only increased since my recent talk with the Alberta Professional Planners Institute and a proposal for a...
Last month, Steven discovered an interesting/unconventional use for funicular technology in Horw, Swtizerland. Essentially a small development was built on a hillside, with a funicular acting as an elevator. Instead of connecting floors in a building, it moved between houses on a hillside. Because of this funicular, it largely increased the hillside’s market value and made the...
There are somewhere around 20,000 cable systems installed and operating around the world at this very moment. Most of the have no implications or ramifications for the urban environment whatsoever. But some do – and there’s virtually no way to find out. That’s daunting to think about. While I’d like to think The Gondola Project...
I want to build upon the concept I described yesterday of ‘Vapour Literature.’ You could also call it Vapour Research or Vapour Evidence but they’re all the same thing: Empirical evidence of a fact that was never meant to exist as evidence in the first place. The example I used was the photo-sharing site Flickr....
Alright. I know I complain about the nomenclature issue a lot, but this is getting ridiculous. Planetizen published the following update on the approved London Thames Cable Car (Gondola): London Approves Aerial Tram Over River An aerial gondola system will be built over the Thames River in London ahead of the 2012 Summer Olympics. “Expected...
San Francisco’s California Street Cable Car line is under-going a major rebuild. As such, Muni (the San Francisco Transit agency) felt the need to inform the public via signs, press releases, websites etc. The Spanish translation of the press release, however, referred to the cable cars as “telefericos.” As any regular reader of The Gondola...
The other day in the comments, Sean suggested using the term “Aerial Rapid Transit” to describe urban gondola transit technology. Good idea. It’s not the first time I’ve heard the term and I know of at least two different proposals floating around that are using it. I’m a fan because it makes logical sense. While...
Published by the Transportation Research Board, the Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual is a kind of bible for the transit planning industry. I use it constantly. Now Kittelson & Associates is preparing the 3rd edition of the manual and they want your help. By clicking here, you’ll be taken to a survey detailing...