Site Issues and Updates

07
Jan

2013

The Gondola Project in 2013

Back in November of 2009, I launched The Gondola Project as an experiment.

Could I write a post-per-day for one straight year about the little-known application of cable cars in urban environments? And in doing so, could I help change the understanding of the technology to the point where people would (increasingly) accept it as a standard transportation tool?

I did, and a few people took notice.

By the end of that first year, we’d gained significant attention and our readership grew modestly. Today, more than 3 years later, our readership is at an all-time high; cable car systems are increasingly being recognized for their capabilities; and the company behind The Gondola Project, Creative Urban Projects, is growing rapidly.

That growth has allowed us to diversify our experience out into fields not associated with Urban Gondolas and we’re more than a little excited about what’s coming in the new year.

As such, we’re incredibly busy and daily postings on this site are becoming too onerous in the short term. So here are some of the changes that you’re going to see in the coming weeks:

  • The Gondola Project Forum is going to be removed. We don’t really want to do that as many people requested its existence, but the continued moderation of the forum is proving to be logistically difficult to the point where only the spammers seem to use it any more.
  • The Forum space will be replaced by a new feature to be announced shortly.
  • We will continue to post 3 times per week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Our hope is to ramp back up to 5 times per week in the future, but some reorganization needs to be done prior to that.
  • Our new cable transit services site will officially launch in late February.
  • The new Creative Urban Projects site will debut in late February/early March. This is a project we’ve been continually trying to accomplish for the better part of a year now and we’re excited to finally be in a position to do something about it.

Thanks again for everyone’s continued support and readership!

– Steven Dale



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21
Aug

2012

Biggest Day Ever

Yesterday was the biggest day ever for readership on The Gondola Project.

It seems someone picked up on the Mieders Sommerrodelbahn and tweeted it, which quickly led to a spike in traffic that continues currently.

Granted, we probably would’ve liked people to land on our site through something a little more on-topic. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit perturbed that the most-viewed page on our site is about an alpine roller coaster.

Having said that, traffic is traffic.

The very reason we post things like the Somerrodelbahn and the Chinese Tunnel Bus™ is that we know they’ll draw in readers. It gets attention and grows an audience. If it’s possible for a public transit website to utilize link bait, then these are the kinds of things that work.

And if even a small percentage of our new visitors take the time to look around and learn a bit about cable transit, then those posts have done their job.



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07
Aug

2012

Wanted: Guest Posts

Despite it being the dog days of August and everyone seems to be on vacation, The Gondola Project is in the midst of its best month of traffic and readership ever. Our readership is rapidly approaching 10,000 unique visitors a month with over 25,000 page views per month. Not too bad for our small little outpost on the internet.

But with that increased readership has come increased attention and work that’s straining our ability to keep up on the site – especially during the holiday vacation season where everyone’s on double-duty.

As such, we’d love to see guest posts by Gondola Project readers. Such posts could involve:

  • Profiles of systems not-yet-discussed on The Gondola Project.
  • Advocacy pieces for (or against) proposed urban gondola systems.
  • Conceptual urban gondola lines for cities around the world.
  • Commentary on Cable Propelled Transit – its merits and its faults.
  • Anything transit-related.

If you’re interested, send us an email at gondola (at) creativeurbanprojects (dot) com.



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02
Aug

2012

New Gondola Website (Coming Soon)

For the last 1,000 days we’ve been using The Gondola Project as an information portal for the world to learn about cable cars, urban gondolas and cable propelled transit – and it’s succeeded beyond any of our wildest dreams!

As a result, our small little planning consultancy Creative Urban Projects has been experiencing rapid growth – particularly in the field of cable transit – such that our current site(s) have outgrown their usefulness. Consequently, we’ll be launching a new cable transit services website in the next couple of weeks and a full revamp of our homepage in the next month. We’re, therefore, looking for a few of our regular readers to beta test the new site(s) and give us their opinions.

If you’re interested in helping us out and want to learn a bit more about where our small (but growing!) company is headed, drop us an email at gondola (at) creativeurbanprojects (dot) com.

And even if you don’t have a few minutes to spare, I’d still like to thank all of our readers for spending your time with us – you have no idea how much we appreciate it!



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05
Jun

2012

Asking About Urban Gondolas, Cable Cars & Cable Propelled Transit

(Note: Regular readers will have seen variations on this post in the past. To prevent any future repetition a version of this has been added permanently here.)

The Gondola Project is doing better than we imagined. The site now routinely experiences 23,000 page views per month split amongst 8,000 unique visitors – not too shabby for our little niche site.

As a result, we continue receive a lot of email requests for details about gondola and cable car transit technology. Often, the requests come from university students asking for help with assigned projects. Other times it’s a company, transit agency, or consultancy asking for system quotes or technical details.

We’re thrilled that people are beginning to pick up on the idea, and we’re happy to help where we can. Several times those inquires have resulted in fascinating projects, relationships and collaborations.

Unfortunately, we also often receive requests that we’re unable to meet. Furthermore, such requests oftentimes sound less like genuine inquiries and more like foreign companies exploiting our openness in an effort to attain competitive, proprietary information. Often, it’s just marketers experimenting with slightly more sophisticated but still ineffective spam techniques.

So in an effort to ease this process in the future, let’s set a few ground rules:

ONE – If Possible, University or Company Email. If possible, please contact us via your university, government or company email address. Sending email from your yahoo or hotmail (or even gmail) account but saying you’re working on a university project can sometimes raise suspicions. Similarly, please include a few details about your university, company or government agency and/or and the nature of your project. That will help us help you. If it is not possible for you to use a university, government or company email (or you simply prefer to use your personal email), please provide us with enough information so that we know your inquiry is genuine. Know that we will never share, distribute or publicize those details.

TWO – Provide details. Often we’re asked by people to help them with technology choice and general advice about designing a gondola transit line. We’re more than happy to help. But to do so we need details. Without knowing the topography, desired capacities, urban environment, etc. it’s impossible. Even more than other transit technologies, gondolas are incredibly site specific. Just asking us to help you design a gondola line is like asking a chef to just help you make dinner. We need to know the ingredients you’re working with.

THREE – Cost is relative. Understand that there is no standard costing mechanism for cable transit. Every system is unique and highly dependent upon the details of the system. There is no good “rule of thumb” for costing a cable transit system.

FOUR – Keep it simple. More and more people are approaching us with ideas for excessively long, complex systems with dozens of stations and hundreds of kilometers worth of loops. Please understand that modest systems are the order of the day – least in the near term.

FIVE – Trust. It’s easy to be mistrustful, hard to be trusting. We get that. If you have an idea for a system, don’t worry, we’re not going to rush off and steal it from you. More than likely, we’re going to ask you to talk to us about it and write about it on the site. One of the goals of The Gondola Project is to help empower people to dream about and create transit in their own communities. We’re not hear to steal ideas, we’re here to develop them.

SIX – Trust us again. Unless you tell us otherwise, and unless the project you’re talking about is already available within the public realm, we will never discuss the idea online. We understand the delicateness of the topic and understand that discretion is the better part of valor. We think our track record has proven this to be true.

SEVEN – Blueprints and schematics. We will never provide blueprints or schematics of existing or planned cable transit systems. We will also not solicit them on your behalf from the cable industry. Such documents are intellectual property, valuable and owned by their respective designers. Please do not ask for such documents.

EIGHT – Repeat. We’re going to say this one again, just because it’s such a common request: We will never provide blueprints or schematics of existing or planned cable transit systems. We will also not solicit them on your behalf from the cable industry. Please don’t ask.

NINE – Read our site. Please take the time to read over the information on this site before sending us questions. We’ve put it together for just that reason. Is it perfect? No. But we truly believe it to be the most comprehensive resource on the web to learn about urban gondolas and cable propelled transit. We also think it’s at least somewhat entertaining and provocative.

TEN – Contact Details. We do not provide contact details for cable transit manufacturers based on a single email. All of their contacts are listed on their respective websites.

ELEVEN – Offer to contribute. Online communities such as The Gondola Project live and die by the contributions of its readers. If you’ve got an idea for a gondola system, tell us about it. Offer to write a guest post on the idea. Stumble us. Link to us. Get involved in the comments. Tweet us. The more we get to know you, the better we’re able to help you and the better we’re all able to help spread this idea.

We genuinely want to hear from everyone who is exploring this idea. We just want to make sure everyone is working from the same starting point.



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29
Dec

2011

The 10 Most-Promising Developments & Discoveries in Cable Transit (2011)

As this time of year brings reflection, we thought it a good idea to take this week to look back upon The Gondola Project and revisit a few successes from the past year in urban gondolas and cable cars. 

In today’s installment, we look back at what we believe to be the 10 Most Promising Developments & Discoveries in cable transit and urban gondolas from 2011 (in no particular order):

  1. One of (if not the) most ambitious cable transit line finally opens for service in Rio de Janeiro – the Complexo do Alemao Teleférico.
  2. Medellin, Colombia continues its aggressive pursuit of the multi-modal ideal when they announce their intentions to build two more urban gondola systems, both integrated into a coming Light Rail Line.
  3. The Gondola Project team discovers an incredibly unique and fascinating funicular in suburban Switzerland that could have major implications for future urban development patterns.
  4. Details solidify around plans for three urban gondola transit lines in Makkah, Saudi Arabia.
  5. The Montréal suburb of Laval announces a feasibility study for an urban gondola connected to the Montréal Metro.
  6. A ropeway test installation by a major steel cable manufacturer suggests the potential for high speed gondolas in the future that reach speeds of 65 km/hr.
  7. Steven Dale speculates how so-called “smart glass” on the Bukit Panjang LRT in Singapore could be used to solve privacy problems in urban gondola installations. Then, 8 months later, Gondola Project Team Member and online researcher extraodinaire, Nick Chu, discovers a little-known pair of gondolas in Aichi, Japan from 2005 that do exactly that.
  8. Two more urban cable cars are under construction in Constantine, Algeria. Such developments, it was discovered, would eventually bring that countries total cable transit system count to 23.
  9. News reports surface suggesting that Calgary, Alberta, Canada wants to explore cable cars and urban gondolas sometime in the near future.
  10. A bizarre gondola system in a Swedish zoo, demonstrates some rather extreme cornering techniques.
  11. (Bonus!) The London Thames Cable Car / Emirates Air-Line is approved. In order to meet an aggressive deadline so that the system is open in time for the forthcoming Olympic games, system construction is launched, branding completed and the first tower is installed all within a matter of months. Despite all these successes, controversy erupts over system costs.


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27
Dec

2011

The 10 Most Commented-Upon Posts On The Gondola Project (2011)

As this time of year brings reflection, we thought it a good idea to take this week to look back upon The Gondola Project and revisit of our successes from the past two years. 

In today’s instalment, we look at the 10 Most Commented-Upon Posts on The Gondola Project from 2011. Note: If you’re new to the site, feel free to join the conversation and add to the debates found below:

  1. The (Il)Logic Behind PRT
  2. Urban Gondola Transit as Minivan?
  3. 3 Innovations in Gondola Transit
  4. Thought Experiment: Why Not Experiment?
  5. Is Public Transportation 340% More Expensive Than It Needs To Be?
  6. Exploring The Thames Cable Car Costs
  7. Question: Attendants Versus No Attendants
  8. Could Hollywood Increase Public Transportation Ridership?
  9. Could Google’s Self-Driving Car Kill Public Transit?
  10. “Gondolas Are For Ski Hills”


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