On Monday, I posted a Weekly Roundup to gather up all the cable-related stories that cropped up over the holidays. That clearly threw off the schedule. So in an effort to re-establish Saturday as designated Weekly Roundup day, we’re putting up another today. Slim pickings, I know, but here goes: A few highlights from around...
Last week a chair lift at Sugarloaf Resort in Maine derailed injuring 8 people, none seriously. Nevertheless, the story was all over the news and internet. But as I’ve argued before here, the degree of media coverage a given technology’s failure causes is inversely related to the chance of that failure’s occurrence. So while it...
I think it fair to say that most North Americans are conditioned to believe there are only a handful of transit modes in the world: Car, Bus and Train. And I’m not so sure most transit planners are any different. It’s not intentional conditioning. There’s no one brainwashing us, it’s just what we’ve grown up...
Ryan sends a link to an op-ed piece in the Waterloo Record: “Truly innovative ideas for public transit are needed to make progress. . . A zipline is a version of a ropeway. They originated to cross valleys and gorges because they are safe, easy to operate, and inexpensive to build.” The author goes on to...
Quick! Hands up if you own an iPad! (Good, now hold that thought because I’ll get back to it at the end of this post.) A comment on a recent post over at Human Transit caught my eye: The post was titled All Aboard The Canadian Hydrogen Overhead Monorail Express and dealt with Canadian Inventor...
A few highlights from around the world of Urban Gondolas and Cable Propelled Transit: The City Fix declares their piece Up, Up and Away as one of their 10 most popular posts of the year. BBC News reports that the London Development Agency is warning that the Thames Cable Car may not be ready in...
A quick look at some of the things that make your cities work (or not): HOLIDAY EDITION First country to celebrate the new year: Kiribati First major city: Auckland, New Zealand Last: Pago Pago, Samoa First year Christmas legalized as a holiday: 1870 Number of finalists for NY’s taxi contest: 3 New York subway poetry:...
During this year’s holiday season, The Gondola Project will not be posting new content between December 24th and January 1st. Happy Holidays to all Gondola Project readers old and new! See you in 2011!
True story: While I was touring the Caracas Metrocable earlier this year, myself and my guide were joined by an elderly gentleman in our gondola. Via my guide, I asked the man how he felt about the system. Did he like it? Any complaints? He said he loved it – except for all the time...
There’s no nice way to say this, but here goes: Had the Metrocables of Medellin and Venezuela been built in a place like Denver, Copenhagen or Zurich, this conversation about cable transit would be entirely different than it is now. Cities would be building these things faster than the industry could keep up. We wouldn’t...