Posts Tagged: Emirates Air Line

20
Jan

2015

Is Your (Gondola) Project Successful?

Dark Tunnel
Who knows. I certainly don’t.

It’s a question we get all the time. Is such-and-such a project a success? Is it going to be a success? Why was this project a success? Why was that project a failure?

Again: Who knows. I certainly don’t.

Success is one of those awful words that sounds great but means virtually nothing.

To measure success, one first has to know the intentions and strategic goals underlying the project. That goes not just for gondolas but any project.

That may seem blatantly obvious to some, but is too often completely outside of the debate when it comes to major infrastructure projects. Too often we focus on what we are building, instead of why we are building it. 

But that’s only half the problem. Another significant obstacle is that not everyone’s strategic goals are the same. Again — totally obvious to some but all too often missing from public debate about our infrastructure needs.

What’s worse is when the intentions are unintentionally miscommunicated or — even worse again — intentionally obscured. That’s why there’s such a debate about things like London’s Emirates Air Line. Everybody seems to think they know why it shouldn’t have been built, but know one really seems to know why it actually was built.

There’s a difference there, and an important one at that.

When you know the reason something was built, it’s far easier to measure whether it was a success or a failure.

In fact, there’s no other way.



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07
Jan

2015

Emirates Air Line: Success or Failure? It Depends

Emirates Air Line in London. Image by Flickr user snappyhopper. (Creative Commons)

Emirates Air Line in London. Image by Flickr user snappyhopper. (Creative Commons)

Over the holiday season, the British media picked up on the story that, apparently, the number of commuters on the Emirates Air Line has literally dropped to zero. Numerous publications (such as here, here, and here) argued this was evidence of the folly of the project and proof of how much of a white elephant it’s become. 

Sure. Okay. Fair enough.

The problem is that this white elephant is getting 20,000–30,000 riders every week. For those keeping track, that’s up to 1.5 million riders a year. Those aren’t white elephant numbers.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not the biggest fan of the Emirates Air Line, largely due to the fact that the capital costs of the system are so completely out-of-whack with industry norms. 

But what gets lost in this whole debate is that as a piece of tourism infrastructure, the system appears to be a success.

Read more



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08
May

2014

Cable Car Photo of the Week: Emirates Air Line

Emirates Air Line. Image by Flickr user MrT HK.

Photographer: 

Photo by Flickr user MrT HK.

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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03
Apr

2014

Cable Car Photo of the Week: Emirates Air Line

Emirates Air Line. Image by Flickr user Chris Sampson.

Photographer: 

Photo by Flickr user Chris Sampson.

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.

 



Want more? Purchase Cable Car Confidential: The Essential Guide to Cable Cars, Urban Gondolas & Cable Propelled Transit and start learning about the world's fastest growing transportation technologies.

07
Mar

2014

Weekly Roundup: Seattle’s Union Street Gondola Plans Revealed

Proposed gondola system in Seattle. Image from Seattle Met.

Proposed gondola system in Seattle. Image from Seattle Met.

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



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05
Jul

2013

Weekly Roundup: Guayaquil, Ecuador Studying Alternative Transportation Options

Conceptual design of Aerobus in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Image from expreso.ec.

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

  • Guayaquil, the most populous city in Ecuador, is in the midst of studying alternative transportation options. Included in this analysis is the infamous Aerobus which of course, has been proposed in many cities across the world but has yet to see a permanent system being installed. The report briefly mentions that the city is not fully committed to any particular technology and may also examine the feasibility of CPT.


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26
Jun

2013

Assessing User Experience on Urban Cable Cars via Social Networking (Yelp, Tripadvisor)

For many of us, we use social media and online review sites to make everyday life decisions. Websites such as Yelp or TripAdvisor can be great resources that help indecisive people, like myself, decide whether or not a restaurant deserves my Friday night patronage.

My personal experiences with crowd-sourcing websites has generally been quite positive — more often than not, a quick scan of reviews can paint a fairly accurate picture of the business.

And since we’re a transit blog built on fun and inquisitiveness, I decided to carry this notion to the world of Cable Propelled Transit. So a few days back, I asked myself: can we use social networking to assess the general receptiveness and desirability of urban cable cars?

Reviews of RIT on Yelp. Screenshot from Yelp.

Reviews of RIT on Yelp. Screenshot from Yelp.

My hypothesis, if you can call it that, is: if these systems are undesirable (i.e. unattractive, a rip-off, poorly designed etc.) in a city, as many detractors claim, surely this will be revealed in crowd-sourcing websites such as Yelp.

While the initial thought of compiling and analyzing user experience data from these websites sounds outright featherbrained, it occurred to me that the findings/implications might actually be the complete opposite. As regular viewers of Kitchen Nightmares know, online reviews can sometimes make or break a business (I won’t post the link here, but if you must know what I’m referring to, search Amy’s Baking Company).

So for my little back-of-the-envelope analysis, I decided to look at the a handful of city-oriented cable cars from across the globe which had reviews, namely: Portland Aerial Tram, Roosevelt Island Tram, Teleférico Madrid, Téléphérique de Grenoble Bastille, Singapore Cable Car, and the Emirates Air Line.

6 urban cable cars reviewed.

Six urban cable cars reviewed – Portland Aerial Tram, Roosevelt Island Tram, Teleferico Madrid, Téléphérique de Grenoble Bastille, Singapore Cable Car and Emirates Air Line. Images from Flickr – Creative Commons Commercial.

Before I began my research, I expected to find a mixed of reviews, both positive and negative. However, what I found was quite surprising — the average overall rating (out of 5) was 4.25 where the lowest was 4 and highest was 5. If you carefully read the reviews, there are very few 1 or 2 star ratings, with the majority of responses being praiseworthy. I quickly noticed that several common themes were emerging — most of which revolved around aerial views, price, and ride quality. A lot of the remarks are quite funny and appear indicative of the general issues surrounding a particular system. For example, my favourite one is from London’s Yelper Tom E. who had this to say about the Emirates Air Line:

Tom E's take on the Emirates Air Line. Screenshot from Yelp.com

I say that’s a fairly accurate assessment. Screenshot from Yelp.

 

Of course by this time, some of you are probably thinking, crowdsourcing reviews are inaccurate and can’t be trusted. While this is true in certain cases, I can’t honestly fathom why a user would take time out of his/her schedule to give a cable car system a fake review.

For the conspiracists out there, could a cable car operator potentially hire people to provide false accounts? Possible, but unlikely. Given the aggregate nature of Yelp where thousands of users write unfiltered reviews, it is likely that if a system is “problematic” in any way, shape or form, the amount of real reviews would counteract the fake ones. Also, I think most individuals are smart enough to weed out the garbage reviews.

So what does this little analysis mean for urban cable cars? My initial feeling is that online evidence reveals that user experience on the CPT system surveyed thus far are overwhelmingly positive. Even in situations where the initial system planning and design was controversial, once these lines become operational, most of these issues are forgotten.

Perhaps due partly to the novelty/rarity of these transit systems and the general “fun factor” of cable cars, CPT lines really do a great job in uplifting people’s spirits while offering them the opportunity to experience their city in a totally different manner.

 

In the future, for a more accurate and detailed assessment, it would be interesting to examine quality of the reviewers, analyze if opinions change over time, expand the sample size and analyze reviews from other websites like TripAdvisor. 



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