A common question: Can gondolas be heated and/or air conditioned? It’s a logical question. As gondolas find more usage in the urban environment, heating and air conditioning is going to become more and more standard. Current urban applications haven’t required cooling and heating systems for the simple reason that most people aren’t in the vehicles...
A QUICK LOOK AT SOME OF THE STATISTICS THAT MAKE YOUR CITIES WORK (OR NOT): Trips taken on public transportation in US: 10.7 billion Trips taken each weekday: 35 million Value of public transit industry: $48.4 billion Amount of carbon emissions reduced by a person switching to public transit: 4800 pounds/year Gallons of gasoline saved...
Number of asses seen by Southern Californian Amtrak riders on July 11: 10,000 Number of days to travel from Beijing to London on China’s new proposed transcontinental high-speed rail link: 2 Cost of high-speed rail tracks: 3x more than conventional Number of car sales in 2002-2003 in India: 6.8 million Number of car sales in...
Just so everyone knows, I’m on vacation for the next week. I’m going to try to answer questions, comment and continue to post. Internet access is, however, very intermittent so please bear with me. Instead, it would be great if you all could answer/address each other’s questions.
Colin writes: I’ve been following your blog for a little while, and although my immediate impression was that the idea was absurd, that quickly morphed into “well why why hell not?” I’ve been a skiier/snowboarder for almost 35 years, and have ridden a lot of gondolas. One question I have is to do with queue control. I’ve found that...
Ski lifts were never meant to be used as public transit. So what? Locomotives were never meant to be used underground. Wood was never meant to be used as lumber. Pipe cleaners were never meant to be used for arts and crafts. Cows were never meant to be used as beef. Spaceships were never meant...
Cable Propelled Transit is just one segment of a technology that has dozens of names, Aerial Ropeways being the most common. But what if you broke it down a bit more? Aerial Ropeways, after all, is a pretty broad term and one that’s not really applicable to the urban area. So how about these: Resort...
If you like the idea of Urban Gondolas and Cable Propelled Transit in general, here’s a few ways you can help out: If you use RSS readers, subscribe to The Gondola Project’s feed. The link is in the upper right hand corner of the header bar. If you use Stumbleupon, please stumble this site. We...
Banff, Alberta, Canada has probably one of the most unique gondola systems in the world. Well, actually they’re all unique. I’ve rarely found two systems that are alike and that’s the both the technology’s blessing and its curse. Yes, each system is different and unique to its own situation. Systems can be configured in any...
Oregon’s Daily Journal of Commerce has an utterly fascinating and informative article here about the replacement of the Portland Aerial Tram’s haul rope. The team that conducted the rope replacement did so in mid air on an aerial staircase known as a splicing bridge. They’ve even got a picture of it. It’s a great read....