What would the ideal city for cable transit be? At least right now while the technology’s still in its adolescence? We once talked about what a “silver bullet” cable system might look like. Well what would a silver bullet city look like? As I see it, a silver bullet city for cable . . ....
At the end of this month I’ll be giving two talks in Wellington at the New Zealand Planning Institute’s annual conference. I’ll be discussing – what else – urban gondolas, this website and the issue of disruptive technologies and insurgent ideas. As a fair bit of The Gondola Project’s readership hails from New Zealand, I’m...
The last couple of weeks were particularly busy for me with more travel, meetings and presentations than usual. I’m very sorry for the lateness of posts, and the sometimes thin content therein. I was also not very attentive to moderating and answering comments – trying to catch up on those right now. Know that I’ll...
A quick look at some of the things that make your shindig work (or not): Happy St. Patrick’s Day! St. Patrick’s Day: March 17 St. Patrick’s original name: Maewyn/Succat St. Patrick’s Day’s original intent: Religious feast day First parade celebrations observed in US: 1737 in Boston In Canada: 1824 in Montreal In Dublin: 1931 Number...
A few highlights from around the world of Urban Gondola Transit and Cable Propelled Transit: Here’s something I’ve never seen before: Apparently Doppelmayr has announced that a new 3S lift for the Sochi 2014 winter games will be able to “quickly convert from passenger to car-carrying cabins as an alternative access route for vehicles up...
If only we had these guys to sell gondolas: Read the interview behind the video here.
San Francisco’s California Street Cable Car line is under-going a major rebuild. As such, Muni (the San Francisco Transit agency) felt the need to inform the public via signs, press releases, websites etc. The Spanish translation of the press release, however, referred to the cable cars as “telefericos.” As any regular reader of The Gondola...
Last week in British Columbia, a 25 year old woman spent 12 hours overnight stuck in an Excalibur Gondola cabin at the Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort. The woman was unharmed and the incident was chalked up to “human error.” Problem is, incidents like this will always put a damper on things. Anytime a city wants to...
Last week at the TED 2011 conference, Google unveiled their self-driving car. And while an interview and test drive with CBS news was both fun and informative to watch, the issue of the technology’s impact on public transit was never addressed. If the self-driving car becomes a reality in the next, say, 20 years, one...
Last week’s post about the Randstadrail and elevated infrastructure (both track and station) generated a few comments and a fair bit of email. Most interesting were the number of emails we received from people pointing out beautiful elevated systems around the world. Without fail, these were systems or installations we’d never ever heard of. With...