One of the difficulties and beauties of cable research is keeping up with all the unique systems that pop up in the most seemingly unlikely of places. One such system is the Vinpearl Land Gondola in Vietnam. The system connects the Vinpearl Land Resort on Hon Tre Island with the Vietnamese mainland. The sea-crossing is...
In the past, your technology was successful if you designed something, marketed it, sold it and people bought it. People used your technology the way you told them to use it and that was that. Then along came things like the internet, Google, the iPhone, WordPress and Web 2.0 and all that changed. Instead of...
This is Part 2 of a 3 Part series of posts on the Innsbruck Hungerburgbahn. To read Part 1, click here and to read Part 3, click here. Leaving the technology-side of things until tomorrow’s post, let’s talk about the Hungerburgbahn’s station configuration. A common misconception about cable transit is that the stations are large...
Last month I toured the Hungerburgbahn CPT system in Innsbruck, Austria. There is much to say about this system, so I’ve broken the column into 3 parts. This is Part 1. The importance of the Hungerburgbahn in Innsbruck, Austria cannot be overstated. Given its unique Hybrid Funicular technology and elegant organic station design by renowned...
You can say whatever you want about Light Rail, Subways and Buses. We can keep that debate going forever. But when it comes to a transit technology’s saunability… Cable’s clearly got them all beat.
I’m in transit to Vancouver today to tour the Peak 2 Peak gondola in Whistler, British Columbia. The Peak 2 Peak uses an advanced 3S technology, whereby vehicles are supported by two stationary cable spans while the third cable provides the propulsion. It’s one of the most sophisticated cable technologies there is. It enables vehicles...
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post titled What Do You Hate About Your City’s Transit System? The post was meant to get people thinking about their own local transit system and to contemplate why they just accept what their transit is rather than what it could be. I encouraged people to email...
What a wonderful phrase: “Gadget value.” I just stumbled upon it in an old history text book and instantly fell in love with the term . . . Gadget Value is the intrinsic interest a mechanism generates totally separate from it’s use. It’s why we love cars, trains and any other mechanism. Cable has massive...
(Check out this fascinating video of a San Francisco Cable Car in action, days before the 1906 earthquake. Tnanks to Ron Wm. Hurlbut for pointing it out!) Lot’s of people have asked of me a variation of the following question: If cable’s so great, why did we change all our cable cars to electric ones...
January 28th, 1882 is one of (if not the) most important dates in Cable Transit history. On that blustery winter day, C.B. Holmes opened the first cable car in Chicago. It was the first time cable was shown to be economical in such a snowy, icy, windy environment. It was also the first known instance...