HISTORY Modern Cable Propelled Transit started in Caracas, Venezuela with the Mount Avila Gondola. This system was originally built in the middle of the last century to carry people from Caracas to the top of Mount Avila where the luxurious Hotel Humboldt had been built. Political and economic strife caused the government to leave for...
Photographer: Photo by Flickr user Dom Pates. About: Every Thursday, the Gondola Project team will select stunning captures of CPT lines. We hope this will continue to bring more attention to the technology and provide visually impactful examples of cable car systems worldwide. If you’d like to submit or nominate a picture for our “Photo of the...
The good folks over at US Infrastructure have invited me to blog for them on occasion. So, of course, the first blog has to do with the Caracas Metrocable and how various people (including The Economist) choose to portray the costs of civil works projects. Please check out Cost Is Relative With Urban Infrastructure.
One Sunday last month, I was standing at a subway station and the overhead monitor informed me that the next train was to arrive in 9 minutes. 30 seconds later, it anticipated an arrival in 7 minutes. Two minutes later the monitor said the train would arrive in 6 minutes. 3 minutes later, the train...
Idea Suppression is the Gatekeeper’s business and it used to be a good business to be in. The pay was good and the costs were low. If you were in the Gatekeeping business, you really didn’t have to do a whole lot of work to do your job well. To suppress an idea all you...
. . . there was a club for urban planners who just happen to be avid skiers. If there were, then this would be the easiest thing in the world.
When I was a child, my mother had a very simple rule when we were taking public transit: If I misbehaved, we walked . . . no matter how far from home we were. I knew perfectly well that my mother didn’t want to walk home any more than I did so one day I...
How you define a problem determines how you solve it. Most transit agencies, planners and governments tend to define an urban public transit problem as a decision between Roads and Rails: Should we use buses, light rail/streetcars or subways? It’s no surprise then when buses, light rail/streetcars or subways are the end result. That’s what...
Optimism Bias is the economic concept whereby humans make forecasts, predictions, budgets and schedules that overestimate the positives and benefits while underestimating the negatives and the risks. It’s unconscious and well documented. It’s one of the major reasons public works, transit and infrastructure projects are perpetually over-budget and not-on-schedule. For example: This morning (a Saturday...
The good people over at Fourstory.org asked me to write a piece on Medellin’s Metrocable and it went live yesterday. Check out The Gondola Revolution. Special thanks to Tony Chavira for all his help and support. Please take some time to cruise Fourstory’s site, you’ll be well-rewarded.