I steadfastly support online file-sharing and streaming sites, legal or otherwise. iTunes? That’s great, too. I support these services because I refuse to pay for television channels and shows that I don’t watch (or album tracks I don’t listen to). And because it is near impossible to use a cable television service that doesn’t force...
The other day I was pretty hard on Aerial Trams for being obsolete, expensive and inefficient members of the cable transit family. Because of their place in history, however, many of the most iconic and important cable transit systems ever built were Aerial Trams, a point I failed to mention. Here are 6 of them:...
The Norsjö Aerial Ropeway in Sweden is the longest aerial cable system in the world for transporting passengers. At 13.2 kilometers long, this system is:
Aerial Trams are the granddaddies of cable transit. They’re big, they’re aggressive and what they do, they do really well. Problem is, they can’t do much. They’re a completely antiquated technology due to their lack of detachability. Like BDG or 3S systems, Aerial Trams use one or two stationary ropes for support while a second or...
I got my first email account in the summer of 1998. It was a Hotmail account. Someone dragged me to a local café and signed me up. It wasn’t that advanced at the time and I wasn’t overly impressed. Was email great at the time? Sure it was, but I didn’t see it. I missed...
There is a story of the scholar who, years ago, produced a dissertation that was loudly hailed as the best written and most valuable in a generation. A copy was reverently placed in the library files and the scholar, as an experiment, placed a crisp $20 bill among its pages. Every year he returned to...
Tactic 6 is the most important because it increases both perceived and actual levels of safety for all because riders can self-segregate as they see fit. It is also a tactic that only CPT can offer. The reason cable alone can offer this is simple: Drivers are too busy driving to be attendants. And if you...
For the last 3 months, myself and a team of 9 students from Ryerson University’s School of Urban and Regional Planning have been working through the implications of what cable transit could mean for their city. A week-and-a-half ago, the team presented their findings in front of their colleagues, faculty and a 5-person panel of...
These images just landed in my inbox and I wanted to share them with everyone because I think they’re pretty special and inspiring. The first two are more from a series of renderings by Austrian design student, Johannes Geisler. You can see more of his designs here. The final image is a new rendering of...
I was recently confronted with an argument against Cable Propelled Transit which I’d never heard before and it intrigued me. Okay, maybe it wasn’t an argument exactly, but it was certainly a challenge: Is it a wise idea to investigate another new transit technology? Given how long it currently takes for government to decide upon,...