Well that didn’t take long at all. Matthew Thredgold of New Zealand was the first to figure out that at one time or another, The Grateful Dead, Rodney Dangerfield, Alvin & The Chipmunks and Andrea Bocelli all sang the famous Italian song Funiculi Funicula. Congrats, Matthew! 50 bucks is yours! Why does this matter? Well, apparently...
What do The Grateful Dead, Alvin & The Chipmunks, Rodney Dangerfield & Andrea Bocelli share in common? (as relates to cable?) Fifty bucks (Canadian) to the first person who can answer the above question. The winner will be announced either tomorrow or sometime in the near future, depending on whether this question is easier than I thought...
Adam Butler is an Australian blogger and advocate of Zero Fare Public Transport. Recently, Adam posted a column on his website called The Public Transport Bandwagon. It’s an excellent piece of writing with an interesting hook. As Adam explains, the Victoria government in Australia has recently spent over $1 billion dollars on an automated ticketing system....
(This is Part 2 of a 2-Part piece on the Bondada-Neumann Study from the late 1980’s. In Part 1, I focused on the issue of Familiarity. In Part 2, I discuss the differences in perceptions between planners with cable experience and those without.) Bondada and Neumann’s discovery that transit planners and engineers had little familiarity...
(This is Part 1 of a 2-Part piece on the Bondada-Neumann Study from the late 1980’s. In Part 1, I focus on the issue of Familiarity. In Part 2, I’ll discuss the differences in perceptions between planners with cable experience and those without.) In the late 1980’s two civil engineers from West Virginia University (WVU)...
Last night I went for a ride in San Francisco. I was on the west coast learning about various cable systems and I was at the end of a long week of traveling and research. I needed room to clear my head, get out of the hotel. I found myself jumping on a cable car at...
On Monday, February 15th an older man and a young man engaged in a fistfight on a public transit bus in Oakland, California. The fight left the young man bloodied, bruised and asking for an ambulance. The incident – as is so characteristic of our world today – was videotaped via cell phone and then...
I just returned from touring the Mandalay Bay and City Centre cable transit systems in Las Vegas. There’s much to say about both, but I’ll leave a more complex analysis for another day. When it came to american public transit back in the late 1800’s, cable cars ruled the roost. One of the major hassles...
For most of the 20th century, the cable industry had been a hodge-podge of European, Japanese and American companies each jockeying for their piece of the blossoming ski industry. Some companies specialized in manufacturing, others in operations and maintenance. Privately owned and maintained systems were common. There were dozens of players but few titans. Like...
Because we’ve always done it that way is not an effective way to justify your organization’s methods, strategies and actions. Especially when it’s clear they’re not working. Because we’ve always done it that way is nothing more than an excuse. At best, it’s lazy and fairly benign. At worst, it’s an enemy of change and...