Beyond the obvious, here’s a few things I think transit should be: Free. Or close to it. Most businesses would pay millions of dollars for a captive market of individuals who predictably use the same two stations twice a day, five days a week. Transit operators should make their money not off of transit, but...
Medellin’s third and most recent Cable Propelled Transit line is Linea L – Cable Arvi. It is only a few weeks old and transports the people of Medellin up through the mountains and all the way to Parque Arvi (pronouned “Ar-bee”), a new nature preserve a few kilometres from the city. The park and transit...
LINEA J Unlike Linea K of the Medellin Metrocable, Linea J is much more actively involved in Transit Oriented Development (TOD). Linea K served an existing and extremely dense neighborhood lacking in transit. Linea J serves the barrio of Vallejuelos and the La Aurora development that is in the process of building and expanding. This...
We interrupt our regularly-scheduled Medellin/Caracas Photo Essay with this shameless bit of self-promotion: The Mark News recently posted an interview segment on Cable Propelled Transit with myself and Dr. Eric Miller of the University of Toronto Cities Centre. Here it is: The Mark also posted a related op-ed piece I wrote on the matter. Read...
THE RETURN OF SANTO DOMINGO Santo Domingo is an isolated barrio in the Colombian city of Medellin. Today it is a place of peace, calm and social progress. Twenty years ago, it was a type of living hell that the developed world can only imagine. Crime was rampant, poverty high. Homes and businesses along Andalucia...
David asks: PRT is getting some buzz lately what with Heathrow’s system going live soon and Masdar in the works. Do you know of any systems or engineering solutions that allow overhead gondolas to work the same way? IE: Swap to a different cable at a junction? Is CPT PRT-able? Swapping to a different cable...
Tune in Wednesday for the start of The Gondola Project’s first photo essay: Medellin/Caracas. I’ve just returned from Medellin, Colombia and Caracas, Venezuela where I toured five of the most important systems in all of cable transit. Two of them just opened mere weeks ago. There’s so much to say, this series could go on...
I just learned of something called ‘virtual kidnappings.’ The way it works is simple: The morally suspect troll around the internet looking for evidence that a certain person (any person) is visiting a certain place at a certain time. Facebook is great for this. During that certain time, the kidnappers then contact the certain family...
So you’ve been thinking about cable and your city for a while now. You think it’s a good idea and you’re thinking of telling your boss, electorate, whomever. Here’s a few helpful hints before you do: Develop a sense of humor about yourself. If you don’t, everyone else will. Grow a thick skin. Deeply related...
For most of your career you didn’t need to know anything about cable. Not anything. Nothing. What transit planner, engineer, policy-maker or advocate bothers with ski-lifts? That’s not transit, that’s a toy for tourists. You could ignore it. You didn’t need to learn about it and your boss never asked about it. No politician mentioned...