A few highlights from around the world of Urban Gondolas and Cable Propelled Transit: In the most ridiculous example yet of American security concerns run amok, skiers waiting to board the Steamboat Springs’ gondola in Colorado are being subjected to police pat-downs. Skiers and snowboarders “must unzip, de-layer, and turn out their pockets.” No comment...
Toronto’s grand LRT scheme, Transit City, appears headed for a premature grave. Almost immediately after assuming his new role as Toronto’s Mayor, Rob Ford declared to the province his intention to kill Transit City and replace it with subway lines. Toronto media has been ablaze with the story since it hit yesterday, but no one...
On Tuesday, New York’s Roosevelt Island Tram reopened after a 9 month, $25 million refurbishment. The rebuild, conducted by Poma, transforms the system from an Aerial Tram to a Funifor-type system. That means vehicles will operate independently of one another. When one vehicle is taken out of service, the other can still be operational. This...
The following is a guest post by Wellington Cycleways’ Matt Thredgold. Steven asks us what we can learn from elevators. He notes that they are the world’s most used form of public transit. It is perhaps stretching the definition of public transit a bit to include elevators, but in some places in the world elevators...
Katharina points us to the Zacatecas Teleferico in the small city of Zacatecas in Mexico. The system is an old Aerial Tram and dates from 1975, likely a Von Roll built system. It’s clearly more tourist attraction than urban transit, but it’s well worth the photos: Thanks so much to Katharina for passing this along!
A quick look at some of the things that make your cities work (or not): Number of Americans traveling 50+ miles for Thanksgiving: 42 million Number of turkeys eaten: 226 million Pounds consumed: 736 million Number of cities with Google Transit: 500+ Cost of LRT compared to BRT in Tampa, Florida: 2.5 x more expensive...
A few highlights from the around the world of Urban Gondolas and Cable Propelled Transit: London mayor Boris Johnson requests government funding for the proposed Thames Cable Car. Johnson joked that he would name the system after – get this – business secretary Vince Cable, should Mr. Cable come through with the funding. Home Vaganza has...
Over at Strong Towns Blog, Charles Marohn has a wonderful post entitled “Confessions of a Recovering Engineer.” In it, Marohn argues that the current state of civil engineering is built around mindlessly applying bible-like standards passed down from generation to generation. It doesn’t matter if those standards have the exact opposite effect than intended (as in...
I don’t know if this is insane or inspired . . . Swedish architect Mans Tham recently proposed we enclose highways with solar panels. Specifically exploring the concept as it pertains to Los Angeles’ Santa Monica Freeway, Thams’ idea “would see 24km (15 miles) of LA’s Santa Monica Freeway covered in solar panels – with...
Recently I was in Zurich, Switzerland and stumbled across this: What you’re looking at is Im Viadukt, a new commercial and shopping district built into the stone mason arches of Zurich’s Wipkingen Viadukt. Originally the Viaduct dates from 1894 and was used to ferry passenger trains into the core of Zurich. Like most elevated infrastructure, the...