I recently travelled to Las Vegas, Nevada to explore that city’s two public cable systems. This is Part 2 of a 3 Part report on the Mandalay Bay Cable Car. The Mandalay Bay Cable Car is the kind of cable installation I love. It’s a modest, unassuming workhorse that demonstrates why cable is just so...
I recently travelled to Las Vegas, Nevada to explore that city’s two public cable systems. This is Part 1 of a 3 Part report on the Mandalay Bay Cable Car. In the late 1990’s, the MGM group wanted to build a new casino in Las Vegas. The new casino – dubbed The Mandalay Bay –...
(This is Part 1 of a 2-Part piece on the Bondada-Neumann Study from the late 1980’s. In Part 1, I focus on the issue of Familiarity. In Part 2, I’ll discuss the differences in perceptions between planners with cable experience and those without.) In the late 1980’s two civil engineers from West Virginia University (WVU)...
Last night I went for a ride in San Francisco. I was on the west coast learning about various cable systems and I was at the end of a long week of traveling and research. I needed room to clear my head, get out of the hotel. I found myself jumping on a cable car at...
I just returned from touring the Mandalay Bay and City Centre cable transit systems in Las Vegas. There’s much to say about both, but I’ll leave a more complex analysis for another day. When it came to american public transit back in the late 1800’s, cable cars ruled the roost. One of the major hassles...
Last month I toured Whistler’s Peak 2 Peak cable gondola system. This is a 3-part series on the system. Part 1 is necessarily technical in nature and will refer back to several pages of The Gondola Project for those unfamiliar with cable technology. With small, incremental baby-steps, cable transit continues to push its capabilities beyond...
As I mentioned yesterday, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency announced on Thursday that the Oakland Airport Connector would be a Cable Propelled Transit system. This was a major breakthrough by a cable technology as it competed head-to-head with two other self-propelled transit technologies and won. One of the reasons cited by BART for...
Yesterday morning, Bay Area Rapid Transit announced their selection of of the Parsons/Flatiron group to build the Oakland Airport Connector. This is a significant announcement for Cable Propelled Transit (CPT) because the transit technology selected for the installation will be a cable system designed and built by Doppelmayr Cable Car. The reason this is so...
There are two major sub-groups of Cable-Propelled Transit (CPT) technology: Gondolas and Cable Cars. Gondolas are supported and propelled from above by cables. Most people are familiar with this technology as used in alpine ski-resorts, however it is finding increased usage in non-alpine urban regions. Cable Cars on the other hand, are supported and propelled...