A few major developments this week in the world of Urban Gondolas and Cable Propelled Transit (the first three are particularly exciting!)…
- The Luzerner Zeitung is reporting on a proposal to link the central Swiss city of Luzern to the suburb of Kriens via gondola. Unfortunately at time of writing, the story link was not working. I’d ask The Gondola Project’s German-speaking readers to post any links or knowledge they have of this proposal in the comments below. As soon as the link is working again, I’ll be sure to correct this problem.
- Roosevelt Islander and Gothamist are reporting that the refurbished Roosevelt Island Tram is complete and is now undergoing testing. The RIT was closed in March of this year for a major overhaul. The replacement system will not be an Aerial Tram as before and will instead be more akin to a Funifor system. This will be the first Funifor type system installed outside of Italy. The Roosevelt Islander blog has a slew of great photos!
- It appears that the long drama that is the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) is finally over. The Austrian Times reports that the project will indeed move forward. Several other online news sources are confirming this and it appears that the project (which has been 30 years in the making) will finally be realized. For those unfamiliar, the project looked like it was a done deal last December, but was later stalled by a slew of bureaucratic setbacks only to be resuscitated this summer and then brought back to life this fall.
- In the Montreal Gazette, Jarret Walker of Human Transit had this to say: We need brands and systems of communication that help people see where their good services are, regardless of whether they’re rail or bus or ferry or gondola. A nice little plug for the technology from a respected transit planning consultant.
- The Vancouver/Burnaby gondola plan gets a write up in MacLean’s magazine (Canada’s equivalent to Time and Newsweek).
- An architect in Poughkeepsie, New York suggests an urban gondola crossing the Hudson River.
- The new Tatev Aerial Tramway in Armenia is set to become the world’s longest aerial tramway. How “world’s longest” is being defined is unclear.
1 Comment
Some Information there is a Gondola from Kriens to Mount Pilatus so the place is familiar with gondolas.
The route is now currently served by Electrical Trolleybuses which goes to Luzern mainstation and further into Luzerne.
The problem is that he gondola will serve less stops than the bus but wont be faster than the bus. And adding more stop would make things worse. The bus is quite frequent that means every 5 min per direction there is a bus.
There is also a discussion about the route and where the gondola will end in Luzern. The Zentralbahn Railtrack is now being laid underground so that right of way could be used by the gondola so the gondola could follow the rail and end near to the mainstation. It is also possible that the gondola will stop near a smaller station. Going to the historical city center is not an option anyway.
As the trolleybus is quite crowded i think the plan is to keep the trolleybus and add a gondola.
As in Switzerland there will be a public vote anyway so it will take some time until they system will be built. first the need to be one or more option and a public vote if such a system is desired at all.