#Cable Cars

Mar 10, 2010
Analysis, Gondola, Other Transit Techs, Urban Planning & Design

Is CPT PRT-Able?

David asks: PRT is getting some buzz lately what with Heathrow’s system going live soon and Masdar in the works. Do you know of any systems or engineering solutions that allow overhead gondolas to work the same way? IE: Swap to a different cable at a junction? Is CPT PRT-able? Swapping to a different cable...

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Mar 08, 2010
Caracas Metrocable, Gondola, Medellin MetroCable

Medellin/Caracas!!!

Tune in Wednesday for the start of The Gondola Project’s first photo essay: Medellin/Caracas. I’ve just returned from Medellin, Colombia and Caracas, Venezuela where I toured five of the most important systems in all of cable transit. Two of them just opened mere weeks ago. There’s so much to say, this series could go on...

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Mar 05, 2010
Analysis, Cable Cars, Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay, Thoughts, Urban Planning & Design

Technicians Not Operators

The Mandalay Bay cable car in Vegas operates under a simple and controversial principal: Technicians, not operators. This fundamental principal means this: The system is never in the hands of amateurs. If you don’t know how the system works in its entirety, you don’t operate the system. It’s the difference between having teenagers run a...

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Mar 03, 2010
Analysis, Cable Cars, Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay, Thoughts, Urban Planning & Design

Mandalay Bay Cable Car, Part 3

  I recently travelled to Las Vegas, Nevada to explore that city’s two public cable systems. This is Part 3 of a 3 Part report on the Mandalay Bay Cable Car. The importance of station design in cable cannot be overstated. Even more than other transit technologies, cable stations have to be designed to accommodate...

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Mar 02, 2010
Analysis, Cable Cars, Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay, Monorails, Urban Planning & Design

Mandalay Bay Cable Car, Part 2

I recently travelled to Las Vegas, Nevada to explore that city’s two public cable systems. This is Part 2 of a 3 Part report on the Mandalay Bay Cable Car. The Mandalay Bay Cable Car is the kind of cable installation I love. It’s a modest, unassuming workhorse that demonstrates why cable is just so...

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Mar 01, 2010
Analysis, Cable Cars, Case Studies, Installations, Las Vegas, Urban Planning & Design

Mandalay Bay Cable Car, Part 1

I recently travelled to Las Vegas, Nevada to explore that city’s two public cable systems. This is Part 1 of a 3 Part report on the Mandalay Bay Cable Car. In the late 1990’s, the MGM group wanted to build a new casino in Las Vegas. The new casino – dubbed The Mandalay Bay –...

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Feb 25, 2010
Just For Fun

A Quick Contest

What do The Grateful Dead, Alvin & The Chipmunks, Rodney Dangerfield & Andrea Bocelli share in common? (as relates to cable?) Fifty bucks (Canadian) to the first person who can answer the above question. The winner will be announced either tomorrow or sometime in the near future, depending on whether this question is easier than I thought...

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Feb 22, 2010
Aerial Trams, Analysis, Gondola, Research Issues, Thoughts, Urban Planning & Design

Bondada-Neumann Study, Part 2

(This is Part 2 of a 2-Part piece on the Bondada-Neumann Study from the late 1980’s. In Part 1, I focused on the issue of Familiarity. In Part 2, I discuss the differences in perceptions between planners with cable experience and those without.) Bondada and Neumann’s discovery that transit planners and engineers had little familiarity...

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Feb 21, 2010
Aerial Trams, Analysis, Cable Cars, Gondola, Research Issues

Bondada-Neumann Study, Part 1

(This is Part 1 of a 2-Part piece on the Bondada-Neumann Study from the late 1980’s. In Part 1, I focus on the issue of Familiarity. In Part 2, I’ll discuss the differences in perceptions between planners with cable experience and those without.) In the late 1980’s two civil engineers from West Virginia University (WVU)...

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Feb 20, 2010
Cable Cars, San Francisco Cable Cars, Thoughts, Urban Planning & Design

California and Powell

Last night I went for a ride in San Francisco. I was on the west coast learning about various cable systems and I was at the end of a long week of traveling and research. I needed room to clear my head, get out of the hotel. I found myself jumping on a cable car at...

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