Note: Due to the Easter Break, the Roundup was moved from last Friday to today. We will continue with Roundups on Fridays from here on.
Emirates Air Line now has cables! Image via The Londonist.
A quick look at some of the highlights from around the world of Urban Gondolas, Gondola Transit, and Cable Propelled Transit:
- Various news outlets (here, here and here for example) are reporting that 75 people were rescued by helicopter from a stalled Aerial Tram in St. Moritz Switzerland. No one was injured. We tend to report on cable accidents here on The Gondola Project because we believe (some might say counterintuitively) that, rather than ignore accidents and rescues, mentioning them highlights the incredible reliability and safety of the technology. If you’d like to learn more about cable’s safety record, see this post. As always (and as we’ve stated before here and here), the degree of media coverage a given technology’s failure causes is inversely related to the chance of that failure’s occurrence.
- The Ngong Ping 360, a tourist system with a seemingly never-ending list of problems, was re-opened last week following a two-month suspension. Unfortunately, the relaunch was delayed due to a storm which seems a little bit odd to be honest. Nevertheless, Hong Kong’s Electrical and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD) has released its investigative report and recommended a series of measures prior to allowing the system to re-open. That report can be downloaded here.
- And lastly: I don’t know what this is, or what it means, but Michael van Baker from Seattle’s The Sun Break posted a vitriolic and profanity-laced diatribe aimed directly at Amazon.com’s founder Jeff Bezos. In the incredibly bizarre column Baker suggests Mr. Bezos explore bringing gondolas to Seattle because “the other ***holes aren’t doing it.” I’ll admit that I have no idea what Baker is talking about but from what I can surmise he: a) doesn’t like Jeff Bezos and; b) doesn’t like the idea of using “cable-f***ing-driven gondolas.” If anyone has any idea (like, really, any idea) what this whole kerfuffle is about, I’d love to know.
