#CUP Projects

Mar 03, 2010
Analysis, Cable Cars, Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay, Thoughts, Urban Planning & Design

Mandalay Bay Cable Car, Part 3

  I recently travelled to Las Vegas, Nevada to explore that city’s two public cable systems. This is Part 3 of a 3 Part report on the Mandalay Bay Cable Car. The importance of station design in cable cannot be overstated. Even more than other transit technologies, cable stations have to be designed to accommodate...

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Mar 01, 2010
Analysis, Cable Cars, Case Studies, Installations, Las Vegas, Urban Planning & Design

Mandalay Bay Cable Car, Part 1

I recently travelled to Las Vegas, Nevada to explore that city’s two public cable systems. This is Part 1 of a 3 Part report on the Mandalay Bay Cable Car. In the late 1990’s, the MGM group wanted to build a new casino in Las Vegas. The new casino – dubbed The Mandalay Bay –...

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Feb 28, 2010
Thoughts, Urban Planning & Design

Crisis

No great city, company, person or government  is anything without crisis. Crisis -when overcome – proves determination and resolve. It hardens the mettle, stiffens the spine. It makes us work, innovate, improvise and toughen up. New York had the 1970’s Bankruptcy. San Francisco the 1906 Earthquake. The London Fire. Montreal’s October Crisis. Barcelona under Franco....

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Feb 27, 2010
Thoughts, Urban Planning & Design

Not Easy Being Green

Gimme’ what the other guy’s got. That’s all City Hall tends to want. Buzzwords. Hype. Tourists. That’s why every city’s racing to be Green, World Class and Creative. City Hall thinks that’s good marketing and it is . . . if you actually are Green, World Class and Creative. But what if you’re not? You...

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Feb 26, 2010
Funiculars, Just For Fun, Thoughts, Urban Planning & Design

Winner

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...

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Feb 24, 2010
Thoughts, Urban Planning & Design

Donald A. Norman

In his book, The Design of Future Things, Donald A. Norman writes: “We must design our technologies for the way people actually behave, not the way we would like them to behave.” Now replace technologies with cities. Or transit. Or government. Or customer service. Or the justice system. Or public policy. Or hospitals. Or lawyers. Or the postal...

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Feb 23, 2010
Oddities, Thoughts, Urban Planning & Design

Adam Butler & Free Public Transport

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....

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Feb 22, 2010
Aerial Trams, Analysis, Gondola, Research Issues, Thoughts, Urban Planning & Design

Bondada-Neumann Study, Part 2

(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...

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Feb 19, 2010
Analysis, Thoughts, Urban Planning & Design

‘It’s how they feel . . . “

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...

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Feb 18, 2010
Cable Cars, Installations, Mandalay Bay

The Las Vegas Cable Cars

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...

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