Sometimes we’re not great at extrapolating and translating from one realm into another. We’re hard-wired to imagine one technology, idea or product as being appropriate in only one environment. It’s like when you learn a second language. Oftentimes, you’ll be baffled by words with multiple meanings. Because you first learned the word in one environment, you...
It’s easy to say we can’t do something, but that’s just a kind of mental paralysis created out of misinformed Rabble. Among other things, The Rabble said no one will ever want to carry around 15 hours worth of music in their pocket; eat green-colored coconut soup; or read about arcane business mythologies from a...
. . . are often touted as the answer to our transit woes. The idea is simple enough: When a transit vehicle approaches an intersection, the light changes to give it priority. Trouble is, there’s very little research to suggest it works and transit advocates such as Steve Munro continue to laud this technology without discussing its...
I’m constantly asked how urban gondolas, cable cars and cable-propelled transit perform in bad weather. It’s an odd question because the answer is so obvious. The technology was popularized, after all, in alpine ski resorts. I don’t, however, begrudge the question. When I began my work on CPT I wondered the same thing. The question bemuses...
To use CPT properly you have to be creative, original, daring and ultimately a little bit mad. That madness is good and important, especially nowadays when cities viciously compete for talent and tourists. Homogenous, cookie-cutter cities no longer make the grade. People want remarkable. Light Rail (LRT), Subway and Bus technologies are useful (sometimes) but...
As I mentioned yesterday, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency announced on Thursday that the Oakland Airport Connector would be a Cable Propelled Transit system. This was a major breakthrough by a cable technology as it competed head-to-head with two other self-propelled transit technologies and won. One of the reasons cited by BART for...
Yesterday morning, Bay Area Rapid Transit announced their selection of of the Parsons/Flatiron group to build the Oakland Airport Connector. This is a significant announcement for Cable Propelled Transit (CPT) because the transit technology selected for the installation will be a cable system designed and built by Doppelmayr Cable Car. The reason this is so...
Some might say so, but I’m not one of them. A niche implies specificity. People assume Cable Propelled Transit to be a niche technology because, I think, they are most familiar with it in situations where a large change of elevation occurs. That change in elevation, these people would argue, is its niche. I look...
I’m traveling today and am out of internet contact (why can’t more airlines fix that problem?), so we’re going to watch a video (like when your high school history teacher was sick with strep throat) It’s short, it’s in French, and it should inspire the transit wonk in all of you (especially starting at 0:56)....
Way back in the day (we’re talking 1872 here) Cincinnati, Ohio was clustered at the base of several small mountains. As the city grew and expanded up the sides of the mountain city officials had a problem: How were people and goods to be moved up and down the mountains? This was, of course, before...