Posts Tagged: China

11
Oct

2014

Weekly Roundup: French City, Le Havre, Studies Urban Cable Cars; Brno Mayor Promises Urban Gondola by 2017

Urban gondola alignments under study for Le Havre. Image from paris-normandie.fr.

Urban gondola alignments under study for Le Havre. Image from paris-normandie.fr.

A quick look at some of the things that happened this week in the world of urban gondolas, cable cars and cable propelled transit:

  • Le Havre, a French city of 250,000, is currently studying the feasibility of building a network of urban cable cars. The report is scheduled for completion by the end of this year. Two to three different alignments are now under examination which would link up places such as Jacques-Monod Hospital, the center of Montivilliers, Jenner, and an industrial area. 
  • After seeing the Montjuic Cable Car, Roman Onderka, the mayor of Brno was inspired build an urban cable car in the Czech Republic’s second largest city. The system is proposed to connect the Faculty of Medicine at Bohunice (in the southwest of the city) to the Pisarky tramway (in the northwest of Výstaviště) within 5 minutes. If he is re-elected, he believes the system can be complete in 4 years.


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Weekly Roundup
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21
Aug

2014

Cable Car Photo of the Week: Chongqing Yangtze River Cable Car

Yangtze River Cable Car (Chongqing, China). Image by Flickr user Clément Belleudy.

Photographer: 

Photo by Flickr user Clément Belleudy.

About:

Every Thursday, the Gondola Project team will select stunning captures of CPT lines. We hope this will continue to bring more attention to the technology and provide visually impactful examples of cable car systems worldwide. If you’d like to submit or nominate a picture for our “Photo of the Week”, we’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment below or send us an email at gondola@creativeurbanprojects.com.



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Photo of the Week
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11
Feb

2013

Snack On Top Of Qingtianhe Cable Car

Because of course someone thought this was a good idea.

Because human stupidity knows no bounds, two men decided to take a snack on the wild side at Qingtianhe national park in central China.

While riding the park’s cable car, the pair somehow managed to open the cabin’s doors, crawl on top of the cabin and indulge themselves in an afternoon snack.

Park officials – apparently and completely redundantly – warned other visitors of the risks involved in such a stunt after which they also reminded visitors of the dangers of pole vaulting in lightening storms and opening airplane doors mid flight.

Entirely absent from any reports on this incident are the following:

  • How did these two men manage to open the cabin doors?
  • Are these cabins designed such that they can be opened from the inside?
  • If so, don’t park officials think that’s, like, a really bad idea?

Requests for the answers to those breathtakingly simple questions were not immediately returned.



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Just For Fun
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18
Oct

2012

4 Hour Cable Car Queue During China’s Golden Week Holiday

Regular ticket lineup on a cable car system (Ngong Ping 360). Image by Flickr user Parka81.

Generally speaking, boarding a gondola is a rather straightforward process. You stand in line, purchase a ticket and hop into a cabin.

Yet this seemingly painless exercise unfortunately becomes a little bit more difficult (to say the least) when an entire country of 1.3 billion tries to go on vacation all at once.

During China’s national holiday week in October this year, Mount Tai – one of China’s Sacred Mountains – saw a massive influx of 65,000 visitors on a single day. As a result, the cable car system was completely and utterly overwhelmed. Since visitors had to choose from either a: 1) a 10 minute cable ride; or 2) a 10 hour “5000 step” hike, many were left with no choice but to queue for four hours.

And in case you’re curious about how a four hour line up looks like, here’s an example:

So where do I start lining up? Image from news.hexun.com.

It’s probably safe to say that the operators who originally built this modest 2km system back in 1983 probably didn’t see this coming. Remember that it wasn’t until the late seventies when the country first reopened its doors and started greeting domestic and international tourists.

So while I can’t see myself ever standing in line for four hours, it may have been worth the time for those who waited it out. From the looks of it, this ride really does treat tourists to some pretty spectacular and breathtaking views. Check it out.

Taishan cable car. Image from www.000219.com/.

Image by Flickr user jin_alli.


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I’m not sure about you guys, but visiting this place is definitely something that I’d like to cross off my bucket list – I just gotta remind myself to not go in October.

And if for some reason you wanted to see more jaw-dropping pictures of over a billion people on vacation, click here.



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Installations
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05
Sep

2012

Chongqing Cable Car Back in Service!

Remember last year when the Chongqing cable car finally closed after 20 plus years in operations? Well, according to Xinhuanet, China’s first CPT system is now back in full swing. For more pictures, click here.

Chongqing Cable Car. Image by Flickr user angshah

 



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Chongquing Cable Car
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02
May

2012

Sex in cable cars banned in China (seriously)

The Chinese Province of Henan has put a ban on, well, the gondola equivalent of the “mile high” club following numerous complaints about such activities occurring in one specific park installation. The popularity of the activity, however, appears limited to younger generations as only people born in the 90’s have been forbidden from such mid-air extra-curricular activities – implying, of course, that the sky’s the limit for anyone else.

It’s hard to tell if this is actually a thing – as in, this is something that’s a real, actual problem that needed to be addressed; or if it’s just an-overreaction to one or two isolated incidents.

Either way, you can be certain of two things.

Firstly: People who don’t like the idea of using gondolas as transit will use this as an argument against the technology.

Secondly: Those companies that install closed-circuit cameras in gondolas are likely to see a dramatic increase in their business.



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Just For Fun
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19
Mar

2012

Spare some change? Shangqiu, Henan (China) Public Transport

Imagine if your paycheque came in the form of dollar bills. This is how it'd look like. Image by xinmin.cn.

Fare collection in transit systems have evolved dramatically in the last decades with many large agencies opting for electronic payment systems such as the Oyster Card (London) and Octopus Card (Hong Kong). However, in many places around the world, many people who are unfamiliar with this form of payment still choose to pay using regular spare change.

In the city of Shangqiu, located in China’s Henan province, staff working in the public transit agency have received their wage straight from the farebox (literally) for the past 12 years (link in Chinese)! This might be absurd (and slightly amusing) but there are two perfectly logical reasons for this: 1) While a transportation card exists, the number of users adopting this system is minimal; and 2) Local banks aren’t willing to accept that much loose change.

So the result is workers taking home a stack of bills and coins. Judging from the smile of the employee pictured above, I guess receiving a wage in dollar bills is better than not receiving a wage at all.

I'd hate to be the one responsible for sorting that out by hand. Image by xinmin.cn.

This brings several things to question: what is the farebox recovery of this transit system in Shangqiu? And are employees paid a fixed income or do their salaries fluctuate based on the amount of paying riders?

While this would obviously never happen here in North America, I can’t help but imagine what the results would be if this were to occur in the US and Canada. Better service? Poorer service? You be the judge.



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Just For Fun / Public Transit / Questions
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