A huge system of rip-offs was recently exposed in the Jammu and Kashmir Cable Car Corporation. This sophisticated and carefully organized scam sold cheaper, fake tickets to the public for the Gulmarg Gondola, one of Asia’s most scenic cable cars. The tickets looked so genuine that, according to the news story, management believes the scam...
If you’ve ever been to Venice, you know that it is always busy and getting around is never easy. There are no roads, just canals and walkways between buildings which can suddenly shrink by 80%, courtesy of the unique and quaint if frustrating urban planning. If you’re in a hurry, learn to say ‘Permesso’ while...
This may sound obvious but a major benefit of planning cable car infrastructure for cities is you can see where you are building. Such cannot be said for subways and, especially in historical cities like Rome, it is a major problem for urban planners and commuters. In 2014, the first section of Rome’s Line C...
Oddly, one of the simplest but greatest joys I’ve experienced as a parent were Saturday morning subway rides with my daughter when she was between 3 and 6 years old. She loved the whole experience, from giving a ticket to the attendant in the booth, to looking out the window as the tunnel lights rushed...
Last month, Dopplemayr made a big splash is the ropeway transit industry. They inked a deal worth nearly a half billion US dollars, for six new ropeway cable car lines in the neighbouring Latin American municipalities of La Paz and El Alto. Another 20km will be added to the existing ropeway system over the next...
As far as most transportation planners are concerned, urban transit systems should be evaluated based on major “function-related” items only (i.e. level of service, capacity, travel times, speeds, costs and etc). Such an analysis is appropriate in transit applications if the only objective is to move users from point A to point B in the...
Forgive the pun, but with yesterday’s announcement of six new cable transit lines for La Paz, Bolivia, the developing world continues to show that it is actually capable of developing new transportation projects, whereas the developed world seems to be capable of little more than resting on the laurels of what was developed generations ago. Consider the Bolivian situation:...
One of the biggest advantages of CPT technology, is that it’s relatively easy to relocate a system, or parts of a system, to another location — sometimes for an entirely different purpose. While it’s not unheard of to see decommissioned subway cars get recycled (the TTC in Toronto recently sent some cars to Nigeria), you can...
Who knows. I certainly don’t. It’s a question we get all the time. Is such-and-such a project a success? Is it going to be a success? Why was this project a success? Why was that project a failure? Again: Who knows. I certainly don’t. Success is one of those awful words that sounds great but...
From mobile devices to urban planning, space is always at a premium. Ever-smaller devices like smartwatches are able to do infinitely more than the average home PC of a decade ago, while developers are stacking compacted living quarters higher and higher into the sky. Minuscule gadgetry has existed for centuries; the very idea of vertical...