A strange thing happened during yesterday’s discussion of the spiralling costs of the London Thames Cable Car: Like any time before when the topic of urban versus resort installations comes up, the de facto response is: Well, duh, of course it’s more expensive to build in cities and for government. You’ve said it. I’ve said it....
I want to build on yesterday’s post about how our decisions as human-beings can be and are constantly impacted by our desire for fun: When we sacrifice expediency’s sake for the scenic route, we do so because it’s fun. When we waste hours of productive time playing Angry Birds, we do so because it’s fun....
Last week the Globe and Mail reported on a Statistics Canada study showing that “the vast majority of commuters remain reluctant to use public transit, despite public campaigns encouraging people of its environmental and cost benefits.” The study goes on to state that “commuters who used public transit took considerably longer to get to work...
Here’s a question: Why is it that the stations for bottom-supported cable car systems are almost never staffed with attendants whereas aerial systems always are? This is something that just occurred to me the other day and I have no answer for it. Thoughts?
This week on the Gondola Project forum, in response to last week’s post about the future of aerial transit, there was a video response with the Jetson’s theme song displaying the idea of personalized flying mobiles. This got me thinking about both science fiction and outer space (since everything in that show appears to be...
Food, Clothing and Shelter. All capital letter nouns when uses in tandem. Those are the three things we always presume make up the fundamental needs of a human existence. They are the most basic things we need to survive in our world. But are they really? Food, most certainly, is an essential of life (and...
The practice of insisting upon a singular public transit technology to the exclusion of all others with no strong justifiable reason. An unwillingness to admit to the weaknesses and failings of an idolized public transit technology. A rejection of multi-modality in public transportation. A preference for uni-modal models of public transportation when applied solely to...
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....
There are three commonly known types of research (and we’re conditioned to only listen to and accept one): White Literature – Clean, pure and peer-reviewed. Academic. The Gold standard. Black Literature – Advertising, marketing, corporate literature, propaganda. Grey Literature – The stuff in-between. Company white papers, government reports and think tank advocacy pieces. I’d like...
Here are five things that are likely to occur with Cable Propelled Transit technology in the near future: ONE. A new competitor will enter the market. Arguably and to some extent, the urban public transit market is being ignored by the existing cable transit industry. That’s too huge a market to ignore. How long do...