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...
Your children and/or grandchildren will think it’s cool. You will save lives because you’re implementing the safest form of mass public transit there is. You will save your city money which will make everyone at City Hall happier. Your peers will respect you for doing something different. You will have fun. You like fun, don’t...
We’ve experienced a “few” extra hits here on The Gondola Project since this article came out in the Toronto Star. I know many of those new visitors may be hostile to the idea of Cable Propelled Transit, and that’s okay. All I ask is three things: a) Remember, this site is a work-in-progress. If you...
I’m in transit today to visit the Innsbruck Hungerburgbahn. This should be a fascinating system to explore given that it is one of only a few so-called Hybrid Funiculars in the world. As I understand it, the beauty of a Hybrid Funicular is that the chassis and the cabins align themselves separately from one another....
All the best to everyone on this, the last holiday season of the first decade of our new millennium. I’m terrible with Christmas cards (as any of my friends or family members will tell you) so let me just say this: The last ten years have been rare, yes. Much ink and bandwidth will be...
Urban Gondolas provoke awe and that’s a good thing.Cities need more of that, so long as that awe isn’t at the expense of good ideas and sound planning. Back in the winter of 2008, I was working on a report about Cable Propelled Transit (CPT). I’d had the idea to take images of familiar landscapes...
It’s important to recognize that the term used to describe a Detachable Grip is detachable not attachable. Detachable grips are attached to a cable with heavy, industrial springs providing the pressure necessary to create the grip’s vice-like hold. Until a constant, targeted, external and specially-designed force is applied to pry open the grip, the grip’s hold is (for all...
Sometimes we’re not great at extrapolating and translating from one realm into another. We’re hard-wired to imagine one technology, idea or product as being appropriate in only one environment. It’s like when you learn a second language. Oftentimes, you’ll be baffled by words with multiple meanings. Because you first learned the word in one environment, you...
It’s easy to say we can’t do something, but that’s just a kind of mental paralysis created out of misinformed Rabble. Among other things, The Rabble said no one will ever want to carry around 15 hours worth of music in their pocket; eat green-colored coconut soup; or read about arcane business mythologies from a...