I spent the better part of a morning trying to track down an embeddable (let’s just pretend that’s a word, okay?) version of this news report on the urban gondolas in Algeria. Unfortunately, my search was in vain.
Nevertheless, you should certainly check it out. Unfortunately it’s all in German (no offense to our German-speaking readers). Yet despite that, it has some of the best video footage of the Algerian gondolas I’ve ever seen.
And given the fact that the politics in North Africa are – shall we say – complex, I highly doubt we’ll see many more videos of this quality in the near future. A shame, because these look like truly fascinating systems!
A few stray observations:
- Strong physical integration between bus and gondola stations (0:19).
- Beautiful (1:04).
- While the tower is certainly no work of art, it doesn’t impose on the streetscape as one might expect (2:15).
- It would be interesting to know what reaction the tenants of that apartment building think of the system (3:15).
- The station is positively modest in its interaction with the surrounding urban fabric (3:25).
10 Comments
great video
we need a translation!
@ Mono,
Maybe one of our German speaking readers could take the time to give us a transcript? 😉
Here is some info I could quickly compile on it, a few videos as well. I did notice the cars had solar panels on them. http://bit.ly/fqyyph
@ Sean,
Thanks!
Could you post any other version of this video at all? This .mov is almost unwatchable for me.
I do agree with you about the station integration, especially the beautiful plazas they’ve built around them. Transit planners here could learn from that. Putting transit stations in a park like setting is bound to attract more riders since the station itself becomes a place of interest and not purely utilitarian. Her in Vancouver our Skytrain stations, though often architechturally attractive, tend to be located in the middle of sterile concrete slabs.
http://wstreaming.zdf.de/3sat/veryhigh/101025_seilbahn_nano.asx
this is windowsvideo
@jc,
Thanks!
The gondola shown has a capacity of 2000 ppdph and uses 15 Persons gondola. It was built by swiss company Garaventa. As the city is divided by a deep gorge and has severe traffic jams the gondola can cut a 2 hours car ride down to a 8 Min gondola ride. Thanks to that soem ppl now can eat lunch at home.
Further they talk that an urban gondola is in service for 6000 hours per years. Gondolas for wintersport have 1200 hours. Gondolas for winter and summer aouround 2400 hours. Also they emphasize that the gondola is quite, has a small footprint and like a subway is independent from the rest of traffic.
At the end of the movie the show public transit in Zurich with blue-white trains, trams and busses. It is planned to build a gondola from Stettbach ,a commuter rail, tram and bus station, to the zoo to improve access to the zoo from direction north-east. The current tram links main station and the zoo and for some people the terminal station of the tram needs a too long walk to the zoo ca 500m. The planned gondola would avoid a detour trough the city centre. They say it would be the first urban gondola in Switzerland. Although it will be built over a forest and serve mostly leisure activity. BTW Zurich has already two funiculars as well a cable powered people mover at the airport. And once there was a gondola over the lake of Zurich. A connection which would be very valuable from a transit perspective. Unfortunately it was removed because opponents said it spoils the view.
@ matthias
Cheers for the translation!
I found some more Algerian gondola videos on youtube if you guys are interested! All very good watches! The stations are all very beautiful and match local styles and flavours. However, the stations in the Skikda are more modern.
Tlemcen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRpzV-m4BRM
Constantine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm7Mb8i6vc0
Skikda
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gyDcDfHNFo&feature=related