Posts Tagged: Sugarloaf

19
Dec

2014

Weekly Roundup: Cable Car to Kuelap; Arthurs Seat Gondola Approval; Helicopters and Cable; Zipline Santa

 

Kuelap ruins in Peru. Image via Wiki Commons.

Kuelap ruins in Peru. Image via Wiki Commons.

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

 

Machu Picchu II (Peru)
Earlier this year, Peru announced plans to build a cable car to the Kuelap ruins, a mountain fortress built by the “Cloud People” around 500AD. Located in the northern part of the country,  the site has remained largely inaccessible to travellers. Anticipation for the cable car system, which is slated to open in 2016, was piqued once again with reports that Peru hopes to turn Kuelap into a “second Machu Picchu.”

Arthurs Seat Approval (Australia)
A tribunal in Victoria has finally green-lit the gondola project at Arthurs Seat, southwest of Melbourne. The new cable car system will replace the accident-plagued chairlift that once served the popular hiking and tourist destination — after a number of shut downs, the chairlift system was completely removed in 2013. The $18 million project is expected to attract some 159,000 riders per year.

Cable via Helicopter (Bolivia)
We’ve been following the construction and launch of the cable car transit system in La Paz, Bolivia, for some time now. But here’s a whole new angle to the story of how part of it was built: an interview with a member of the helicopter crew that hung all 4,000 metres of cable. (No word on whether they blasted “Ride of the Valkyries” while they were flying around with all that cable.)

Holiday Spirit (Brazil)
Tis the season… or something. Here are a few photos of Santa Claus zip-lining alongside the Sugarloaf cable car in Rio.



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.

Weekly Roundup
0
Comments
07
Jan

2011

Sugarloaf Chairlift Accident

An image from the scene of the Sugarloaf incident. Image via Boardistan.

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 may seem counter-intuitive to believe, the fact that you actually saw a news report about a ski lift accident is evidence of the technology being really quite safe.

According to the National Ski Areas Association:

  • there have been a total of 12 passenger fatalities involving ski lifts in the United States since 1973. This works out to 0.17 passenger fatalities per 100M passenger miles travelled.
  • An additional 3 fatalities involved employees, trespassers and other incidents. If one were to include these 3 fatalities with the 12 described above, one arrives at a figure of 0.21 passenger fatalities per 100M passenger miles travelled.
  • The last known gondola / aerial tram fatality occurred at Vail, Colorado in 1976; 4 passengers were killed.

Of course these numbers do not include non-ski lift area cable systems. But given the relative rarity of such systems in the United States, I think it reasonably fair to assume few if any additional fatalities. And while I could be wrong about this, I am unaware of any fatality in the recent history of aerial cable systems in urban areas of the United States. There have also been no fatalities associated with the Metrocable systems in Medellin and Caracas according to officials I interviewed last year.

Just to put things into perspective, the National Safety Council’s 2010 Injury Facts reports that in 2008:

  • 39,000 Americans died in motor-vehicle accidents;
  • 6,162 pedestrians were killed;
  • 6,700 died from unintentional public falls;
  • 3,800 died from unintentional public poisoning;
  • 3,600 people drowned while swimming in public areas;
  • 900 died while bicycle riding;
  • 129 died from tornadoes;
  • and 25 died from lightning.

That’s right, folks. You’ve got a better chance of dying in a tornado or lighting-related accident than you do riding in a gondola.

(I want to follow-up on this post with a comparison to other standard transit technologies. Data-gathering, however, is proving quite laborious. Stay tuned.)



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.

Safety
2
Comments