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A few highlights from around the world of Urban Gondolas and Cable Propelled Transit:

• The City Fix declares their piece Up, Up and Away as one of their 10 most popular posts of the year.

• BBC News reports that the London Development Agency is warning that the Thames Cable Car may not be ready in time for the 2012 summer games and would cost £40, not £25 as originally estimated.

• Also with the Thames Cable Car: London Mayor Boris Johnson breaks his pledge not to use taxpayer dollars to fund the system. Seems to us that if taxpayers are to pay for a part of the system, full integration into the London transit network would be appropriate compromise.

• A blogger proposes a gondola line for Pittsburgh. And while we’ll admit some of his statistics are a bit questionable, he brilliantly discusses the difference between a Gondola and an Aerial Tram thusly: An aerial tram is about as closely related to a gondola as a housecat is to a lion.

• The Kansas City Zoo will open a new “Sky Safari” aerial tram in 2011.

• Rescuers in Spokane, Washington use the Spokane River Tram to rescue a drunk man suffering from hypothermia at the river’s edge.

• Urban Habitat provides their take on the controversial Oakland Airport Connector.

• The president of Rio 2016 visits the new Complexo do Alemåo Cable Car. Meanwhile, the President of Brazil inaugurates the system.

• Both Doppelmayr and Poma/Leitner lose out on a bid to build a new system in the Turkish city of Izmir. The alleged reason: they submitted their bids in English, rather than Turkish.

• Never ride a cable car in Pakistan: Technical experts say that home-made cable transit systems in Pakistan are not safe for river crossings. Support cables have been purchased from scrap dealers and lifts were “installed without inspection or approval of qualified engineers. Moreover the lift operators were not qualified and could not detect a fault in the machinery… The safety of users was not their concern.”

To reiterate: NEVER ride a cable car in Pakistan.