A Thought Experiment: Imagine no such thing as public transit had ever existed. Instead, you had a vision last night and dreamt up the concept today. You decide this is a great idea and call it “public transit.” You want to sell this public transit thing to an investor, (public or private, it doesn’t matter) and you...
Never ignore the local, vernacular knowledge of a foreign land. When you plan or decide for someone else, it’s your obligation to listen to what the locals know. When you don’t, things can go terribly wrong. For example: The Marine Atlantic ferry system linking the island of Newfoundland to Canada’s mainland is a disaster as...
One of the difficulties and beauties of cable research is keeping up with all the unique systems that pop up in the most seemingly unlikely of places. One such system is the Vinpearl Land Gondola in Vietnam. The system connects the Vinpearl Land Resort on Hon Tre Island with the Vietnamese mainland. The sea-crossing is...
It took me a while, but I’ve finally compiled all the comments left online to the Toronto Star article that appeared last month. Here, in a completely unscientific study, I present the results. Most of the comments left could be categorized in one of four ways: This is the worst idea I have ever heard...
In the past, your technology was successful if you designed something, marketed it, sold it and people bought it. People used your technology the way you told them to use it and that was that. Then along came things like the internet, Google, the iPhone, WordPress and Web 2.0 and all that changed. Instead of...
This is Part 3 of a 3 Part series on the Innsbruck Hungerburgbahn. Part 1 can be found here and Part 2 can be found here. The Hungerburgbahn is what is known in the industry as a Hybrid Funicular. It is a unique and rather new technology that defies categorization and is bound to confuse....
This is Part 2 of a 3 Part series of posts on the Innsbruck Hungerburgbahn. To read Part 1, click here and to read Part 3, click here. Leaving the technology-side of things until tomorrow’s post, let’s talk about the Hungerburgbahn’s station configuration. A common misconception about cable transit is that the stations are large...
Last month I toured the Hungerburgbahn CPT system in Innsbruck, Austria. There is much to say about this system, so I’ve broken the column into 3 parts. This is Part 1. The importance of the Hungerburgbahn in Innsbruck, Austria cannot be overstated. Given its unique Hybrid Funicular technology and elegant organic station design by renowned...
With most traditional transit technologies, there is little consideration about the variations within that technology. A bus is a bus; a streetcar is a streetcar; and a subway is a subway. Sure, there’s variation between suppliers and models, but those differences are negligible compared to the overall technologies themselves. That’s one of the real competitive...
I’ve had a lot of support and interest since The Gondola Project launched a couple months back. As such, I’ve decided to dedicate some resources to upgrading and revamping the site. Namely, I’d like to see the site be a little more user-friendly and have a more customized look. So over the next couple of...