A quick look at some of the things that happened this week in the world of cable cars, urban gondolas, and cable propelled transit:
Lagos is notorious for having some of the world's worst traffic jams. Image by Flickr user Alf Gillman.
- Lagos, Nigeria may soon be the next major metropolis to build a CPT system. Reports indicate that $500 million will be invested. Construction is scheduled to start in November this year while the entire project is slated for completion in early 2015.
- Officials in Round Rock, Texas – a city of 100,000 north of Austin – are hosting a public forum to discuss the viability of using urban gondolas as mass transit
- Several passengers were injured while riding San Francisco’s cable cars when it stopped abruptly due to a small metal object lodged in the line
- The new Ski Apache gondola was apparently vandalized by two young men aged 19 and 20, who were detained for questioning
5 Comments
$500M to be spent for a gondola project in Lagos, Nigeria?!?
(I almost looked at my calendar to make sure I’d not lost ~45 days
and it was April 1st already)
This sounds as believable as that Prince in Nigeria trying to give you money via that tired old email scam. The type that seem so stupid and unbelievable. But the one that this article explains is actually savvy in a non-obvious way.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/06/22/why-nigerian-e-mail-scams-are-so-crude-and-obvious/
My question is what are they cetting for $500 million? If it is 15km of 3S then that’s a great deal and exactly what they need. Or 40km of MDG. It sounds like a very large system rather than one or two lines. Do we have any word on what their money is actually buying them?
A video recently came online on Youtube. Similar to what you’ve said already, I believe it was mentioned the system will be 12km. No specific mention of the technology but it can be reasonably assumed that it will be 3S.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqud4IaxC00
great video Nick!
This gov’t representative was very informed, almost too slick in some ways.
The interview was good in that many of the typical concerns were asked and answered in a forthright manner.
It seems that there are 3 distinct gondolas, at least one or more with intermediary station. I could not understand where they were going exactly. But it appears that one is in the north and two around the main central business district/island.
The fact that Lagos is amongst the fastest growing city in the world (~ 275k/year) and the metro area having one of the largest overall populations in the world (~10M, with ranges from 8-12M, which is odd).
Plus the a very high density and integrating with other transit options including heavy rail is encouraging.
A key question was about power which is evidently a problem. The gov’t representative mentioned 5 different types of power that can be used as primary and backup power.
Like I said, a very good video Nick.
Given the capacity requirements in Lagos, you can be assured that they’re going with 3S. We also have no idea to what extent station costs and land acquisition are included in this price point.