Transit is about people. It’s as pure and simple as that. Start with the user, the rider, the people and go from there. Figure out your machines after you’ve figured out your people.
January, 2010
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2010
Classic Gondolas
None of these are what I would consider appropriate examples of Cable Propelled Transit, but they’re neat to look at nonetheless. They give you a sense of how old and basic the technology is. In essence, these are a few of the historic installations that gave rise to modern cable systems. They are still used extensively today.
They are an essential and wonderful part of a transit history that stretches back (literally) to 250 BC. The systems below are privately-owned systems used to access hard to reach Alphütte (Alpine Farms) in Switzerland. Enjoy!
Thanks to Statiönchen for these wonderful images. You can view dozens more of these at The Gondola Project Flickr Group.
Note: These images are not Creative Commons licensed. They have been used with permission by Statiönchen.
29
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Jan
2010
Funivia del Renon
The Funivia del Renon, Bolzano Station, Public Domain Image
Probably one of the single biggest counter-points to urban cable systems is the stations. People are quick to argue that the stations are large, ugly and imposing. It’s a difficult point to argue with because most cable stations are just that: Large, ugly and imposing.
But then again, so are many of our traditional transit stations:
Kennedy Station, Toronto, Public Domain Image
The point, however, is that they don’t have to be.
Cable transit isn’t dependent upon large, ugly stations, they’ve just been designed that way for most of their history. In order to make in-roads in urban cable transit, the cable industry has a responsibility to begin designing stations with cities in mind, but cities also have a responsibility to imagine cable stations in new and beautiful ways.
Which brings me to the Funivia del Renon in Bolzano, Italy (pictured above).
The Funivia is not an urban system, specifically. It doesn’t carry a lot of people and it services a mountain resort. It is, however, a cable system whose terminus is located within a city. The design of that station is therefore very important for our purposes.
While I’ve never visited the system myself, this new system appears (at least on the surface) to blend in excellently with the surrounding urban fabric. The station has an excellent relationship to street level pedestrian and vehicular traffic.
Whether you like the architecture or not, it’s hard to deny that the station adds to the surrounding area, it does not detract from it.
I suspect it is the design of the stations – not the technology itself – that will make or break urban gondolas and urban cable transit. Thankfully, the cable industry seems to understand this and is working towards rectifying that problem.
The Funivia opened just recently in March of 2009, so there are few images and videos, but I managed to dig one up. Take a look:
28
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Jan
2010
Test Drive A Cable System Today!
Take a look at that picture again . . . Now take a look at this one:
Looks like the same system, right? Well, you’re sort of right and sort of wrong.
It is, indeed, the same system, but they’re in two different cities!
For those who don’t know (and I certainly didn’t), the biannual Federal horticulture show in Germany (BUGA) is a big deal. The 2009 show in Schwerin welcomed 1.8 million visitors over 4 months and the 2011 show expects over 2 million visitors.
The two images above were from the 2003 BUGA in Rostock and the 2005 BUGA in Munich, respectively. To provide an aerial view of the show grounds, Doppelmayr installed a simple Monocable Detachable Gondola. At the end of the show in Rostock, the system was disassembled and reassembled in Munich.
How about doing the same thing for an urban transit system? A test drive, if you will.
Would it be a long system? Probably not, but it wouldn’t have to be. It would just have to make a point.
For example, the 2011 BUGA in Koblenz is building a short 850 m long system, but it will carry 7,000 passengers per hour, well in excess of most light rail lines in North America.
What looks to be a 3S system is being built for the 2011 BUGA in Koblenz, Germany.
The most exciting thing about the Koblenz system is that it is not the basic MDG used in Rostock and Munich. From the pictures I’ve seen, it appears to be a 3S, the most advanced aerial cable system on the planet. The 3S was popularized by Doppelmayr with their Peak-2-Peak at Whistler-Blackcomb and will receive significant attention during the upcoming winter games in Vancouver.
The big question is whether or not this will be a temporary installation. The stations are tiny compared to those in Whistler (a good thing for any urban environment), which suggests it is, but I can find no information to support or deny that assumption.
If it is a temporary installation, could it be toured? Could a city just try it out? Kick the tires a bit?
I often talk about the No City Wants to be First Problem. It’s a clear problem when it comes to purchasing transit infrastructure, but does the problem exist if extended to testing transit infrastructure? I’m not sure that it would.
I suspect a touring cable transit system would have no shortage of cities interested.
Who wants to be first?
Images from Dr. Alex Rollrasen, Allie Caulfield, and the Koblenz 2011 homepage.
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Jan
2010
The Public Transit Model
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 develop the following business model:
- Your public transit idea sells a completely, 100% perishable commodity: Space. Your business is not transit, after all, your business is selling space on transit vehicles for a variable amount of time. Every minute that a seat or square foot of revenue-generating space goes empty, it’s gone for good. There’s no opportunity to recoup.
- You use the airline industry as a perfect example to explain the previous concept because that industry experiences the very same phenomenon.
- The space you sell costs billions of dollars worth of infrastructure to build and further billions to maintain and staff.
- Your target market are commuters, but the majority of them drive private automobiles, bike and walk to work.
- Those commuters who buy your product are anticipated to use monthly passes that entitle them to infinite use of your service. Pass-holders will be allowed to give those passes to others, entitling those people to additional and unlimited use of the service.
- Your target market are commuters so the majority of your revenue will come from two 3-hour rush hours. During these times – which you call “crush load” – service requirements will be beyond that which you can effectively provide, frustrating your core target market.
- The other 75% of weekday hours, nights and weekends your public transit business continues to operate with limited service that will lose millions of dollars per year.
- The forecasting method you use to forecast ridership (revenues) and the price to build infrastructure (expenses) has been continually shown to produce inaccuracies of 50-100%.
- The cost to build, staff, operate and maintain your public transit business is well in excess of the revenue it generates.
- You have no complementary stream of revenue to offset the losses your public transit business experiences.
You put together your business plan, hire a graphic designer to make it look spiffy and send it out into the world.
What kind of response do you think you’d get? Would you get any takers? A meeting? Would you get in the door? Would you get the secretary’s name?
I’m not for public transit or against public transit and I don’t believe public transit is right or wrong. What we need is not more public transit or less public transit. What we need is better public transit.
We need a new model and we need you to figure out what that model might be.
26
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2010
Those Ships Ain’t Made For These Waters
Hundreds of cars wait to board a Newfoundland ferry at 3 in the morning. The Marine Atlantic vessel, scheduled to depart at midnight, did not begin boarding until 5 am. Image by Steven Dale.
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 any Newfoundlander will tell you.
Ferry delays and cancellations are more common than not, especially during winter. As the ferry system is Newfoundland’s primary link to the mainland, delays and cancellations cause hardship for truckers and residents alike.
Last summer my partner and I experienced this first hand: One 6 hour delay into Newfoundland (for a midnight crossing) and on the return leg our ferry was cancelled due to a mechanical fire.
In order to catch the next available ferry, we had to drive 1,000 km in 18 hours. That ferry was the lone vessel servicing the entire island population and we were told by Marine Atlantic there was no guarantee of a space on-board.
(We caught the ferry, incidentally, because it was 5 hours late to depart. It dropped us off at North Sydney at the inconvenient time of 3:30 am, at which point most hotels and inns were fully booked. We slept in our rental car in a picnic area.)
“Yeah, it’s tough for you tourists,” a computer repairman explained while I recharged my cell phone in his shop. “But remember, for you guys it’s a hassle. For us, we run out of food.
“Meanwhile,” he continued, “our only real airports (Gander and St. John’s), they build in the foggiest parts of the island. Smart, huh?”
A young man prepares for a nap in the flatbed of his truck to pass the time waiting for a much-delayed ferry crossing in Port Aux Basques, Newfoundland. Image by Steven Dale.
After hearing that, I paid particular attention to grocery and convenience store shelves. They were noticeably bare, particularly in the small town convenience stores which rural Newfoundlanders rely upon for daily groceries.
I asked around as to why this happened so frequently and, as Newfoundlanders are wonderfully outgoing and proud of their conversation skills, I found no shortage of people willing to tell me.
Some blamed Newfoundland’s status as “the runt” of the Canadian litter, other’s blamed operational negligence, but one waitress in Port Aux Basques explained the problem best:
One of the major issues are the ferries used by Marine Atlantic. The newest of them – the Vision – was leased from a German consortium that builds ships for the North Sea. The problem, our waitress explained, stems from the ships being too tall to handle the 100-plus km hour winds Newfoundland experiences.
One ship, according to the waitress, was grabbed by the wind, pushed off-course and nearly slammed into the village itself.
It seems that the land-faring selection committee thought they understood Newfoundland’s waters better than a few generations of fishermen.
The fishermen in the town continually warned the ferry selection committee not to select this vessel, but to no avail. The selection committee went ahead with the decision anyways. A Marine Atlantic employee, unwilling to give her name, confirmed the waitress’s story and said several members of the selection committee had since “moved on.”
“Those ships,” our waitress said “ain’t made for these waters.”
The town, the locals and the fisherman repeatedly informed the committee of their concerns, but the concerns fell on deaf ears. Now look where they are: Worthless ships, constant delays, food shortages and losses-upon-losses due to refunds issued to disgruntled passengers and truckers.
But at least the ferry has a bar (which was closed). Image by Steven Dale.
Advisers, consultants and selection committees sometime make the mistake of assuming that because they, themselves are being consulted for advice they need not consult others for advice of their own. The Marine Atlantic debacle is just such an instance.
Sometimes the advice we need comes from unlikely places. But other times, it comes from an obvious source. It’s not hard, after all, to understand that to learn what kinds of boats work in what kinds of waters, you have to ask a fisherman.
In either case, it should be our duty and pleasure to listen.
