A quick look at some of the things that will make future urban mobility work (or not): Reinventing the Automobile – Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century: First self-propelled vehicle: 1769, Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot First gasoline-fuelled vehicle: 1885, Karl Benz Number of vehicles in US today: 850 million Number of times vehicles would circle planet...
When you first drive through Mount Victoria Tunnel in Wellington, New Zealand it’s impossible to miss the fact that a whole lot of people are honking their horns for absolutely no apparent reason. But there is, in fact, a very good reason for this display that’s led to the Mount Vic becoming known locally as...
That’s what rail transit advocate Tim Mollison of the Tri-Cities Transport Action Group said about a proposal to bring the Aerobus to the Kitchener-Waterloo region in Ontario, Canada. “Gondolas are for ski hills.” Now, listen. Just because you’re an advocate of one thing doesn’t mean you need to be ignorant about another thing. In fact,...
I was more than a little impressed by the speed with which Gondola Project readers were able to identify the system I pointed out in this past weekend’s post. Sure enough, as Mattias pointed out, the system in question was the Bukit Panjang LRT in Singapore. This wasn’t a system I’d ever heard of or ever...
A quick look at some of the things that make your city’s transit system work (or not) Transit and Fuel Efficiency: Barrels of petroleum used per day by cars in US in 2008: 4,663,900 By bus transit: 45,200 By rail transit: 700 BTU (average energy use) per passenger mile for private automobiles: 3437 * BTU...
No big news this week in cable, hence no Weekly Roundup. So instead, I thought I’d share with everyone a bizarre thing I stumbled upon the other day. Take a look at the two pictures below. Can anyone spot the difference? Furthermore, can anyone explain the difference? (Caveat: Aside from being optimized for the web,...
Unfortunately, no post today due to travel. I did, however, want to take a few minutes and tell everyone to check back here next week. We’ll have original images and documentation of the rebuilt Sentosa Island Gondola in Singapore. As regular readers know, it’s an important system but there’s not a whole lot of readily-available,...
Alright. I know I complain about the nomenclature issue a lot, but this is getting ridiculous. Planetizen published the following update on the approved London Thames Cable Car (Gondola): London Approves Aerial Tram Over River An aerial gondola system will be built over the Thames River in London ahead of the 2012 Summer Olympics. “Expected...
For our new readers: Despite the fact that systems like the planned London Thames Cable Car are often officially called “Cable Cars,” they are more often than not Gondolas. This can be confusing to cable transit novices. To make it easier: Cable Cars are supported from below (like cars) and Gondolas are supported from the...