Every so often we are confronted with wonderful and mysterious transportation devices (see Chinese Tunnel Bus). Today, we happen to come across the Sistema Monorail Con Funiculares (or the Monorail System With Funiculars) — a conceptual transit system designed by ECOLVIAS from Medellin, Colombia. There’s not much information about this technology but it does make me wonder what type of...
As we know, public transit agencies rarely implement cable transit solutions within their networks (hence this website), and when they do, they tend to implement them not as fully-integrated components of their network but rather as isolated, independent components (here or here for example). They’re treated kind of like that awkward, sticky-fingered step-cousin you only...
A quick look at some of the things that happened this week in the world of cable cars, urban gondolas, and cable propelled transit: The city of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada may soon embark on a study to examine the feasibility of connecting its river valley via a gondola or funicular. Mayorwatch from the UK...
This is a guest post by Ross Edgar. The Swiss city of Zurich has a long heritage with the operation of funicular cable systems. At one time there were three funiculars within the city limits until the Dolderbahn was converted into a rack railway in 1973. Today, two funiculars remain in Zurich: the Polybahn in...
Here at the Gondola Project, we often discover really interesting uses of cable technology that is little known or understood. Couple weeks back, we found out about the Hohenwerfen Castle funicular and last year, we learned about the private funicular in the Kriens development in Switzerland. In particular, the Kriens funicular demonstrates how cable can be implemented...
This is a guest post by Ross Edgar. There are few castles in Europe more iconic than Hohenwerfen Castle which stands imposingly over the town of Werfen, 40km (25 miles) south of Salzburg on the Austro-German border. The fortress dates back to 1075 but in more recent years featured in the 1968 film epic ‘Where...
What do we call something that both is and is not public transit? That’s something we’ve wrestled with before (here and here for example), but it wasn’t until a quick trip to Quebec City for an old friend’s wedding (congrats, by the way, to Ingrid and Darren!) that the point was driven home for me. As many people...
I love when I stumble across these kind of things . . . Over the weekend I was visiting some friends in the alpine village of Stoos – a village I’d never been to. I figured there’d be some form of cable-propelled transit system we’d need to use in order to get up the mountain and...
In the Swiss suburb of Horw there exists one of the more fascinating applications of cable transit systems – this time in the form of a funicular. The private funicular is used to service a new development of low-rise apartment buildings that crawl up the side of a mountain. So new is this development you...
Over at Makeprojects Jeff describes how he designed, built and installed an 100-foot long wood and steel pipe funicular for the purposes of “people/firewood/beer moving” at his family cottage. And despite Jeff’s wood and steel pipe funicular looking about as safe as one can expect a homemade wood and steel pipe funicular to look, it’s...