Last month I toured Whistler’s Peak 2 Peak cable gondola system. This is a 3-part series on the system. Part 1 is necessarily technical in nature and will refer back to several pages of The Gondola Project for those unfamiliar with cable technology. With small, incremental baby-steps, cable transit continues to push its capabilities beyond...
New York’s famous Roosevelt Island Tram will be closing this spring for a complete overhaul. The system, built in the late 70’s is one of the few public CPT systems in North America and recently became fully-integrated into that city’s transit system. So if any of you are in NY in the next month, take...
I’m in transit to Vancouver today to tour the Peak 2 Peak gondola in Whistler, British Columbia. The Peak 2 Peak uses an advanced 3S technology, whereby vehicles are supported by two stationary cable spans while the third cable provides the propulsion. It’s one of the most sophisticated cable technologies there is. It enables vehicles...
If you’ll recall, cable cars, funiculars, aerial trams and urban gondolas are propelled by means of transit vehicles attaching themselves to a moving cable. Hence the term Cable Propelled Transit. But how does that occur? With Grips, that’s how. Grips are just what they sound like. They are like a fist grabbing onto a rope...
As I mentioned yesterday, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency announced on Thursday that the Oakland Airport Connector would be a Cable Propelled Transit system. This was a major breakthrough by a cable technology as it competed head-to-head with two other self-propelled transit technologies and won. One of the reasons cited by BART for...
Yesterday morning, Bay Area Rapid Transit announced their selection of of the Parsons/Flatiron group to build the Oakland Airport Connector. This is a significant announcement for Cable Propelled Transit (CPT) because the transit technology selected for the installation will be a cable system designed and built by Doppelmayr Cable Car. The reason this is so...
Some might say so, but I’m not one of them. A niche implies specificity. People assume Cable Propelled Transit to be a niche technology because, I think, they are most familiar with it in situations where a large change of elevation occurs. That change in elevation, these people would argue, is its niche. I look...
I’m traveling today and am out of internet contact (why can’t more airlines fix that problem?), so we’re going to watch a video (like when your high school history teacher was sick with strep throat) It’s short, it’s in French, and it should inspire the transit wonk in all of you (especially starting at 0:56)....
Way back in the day (we’re talking 1872 here) Cincinnati, Ohio was clustered at the base of several small mountains. As the city grew and expanded up the sides of the mountain city officials had a problem: How were people and goods to be moved up and down the mountains? This was, of course, before...
. . . it is a movement. Brian Tyler is an aspiring planner with degrees in economics and international business and he’s smart. His two websites (Paris, The Avant-Gard of Rail and Switching Modes) are innovative explorations of transit issues without the typical techno-babble. He knows how to connect. Two of his posts in particular...