What better way to see fall foliage than from above in an aerial tram. The Alyeska Aerial Tram in Alaska has spectacular views all year round. The system takes you to the top of Mount Alyeska where there is food, views, and trails. The system rises 3,869 feet at 26 miles per hour. The annual...
The Little Cottonwood Canyon traffic mitigation plan selected the gondola as the preferred alternative and is exploring adding a toll to both Little and Big Cottonwood Canyons. The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) and other state transportation agencies are currently studying alternative toll methods to mitigate the existing traffic congestion and future traffic volumes. As...
The Prairie Sky Gondola project in Edmonton has been cancelled. City council voted 12 to one to terminate the city’s agreement with Prairie Sky Gondola due to several reasons, including the financial risk to the city and the idea of building on the Rossdale Burial Site. The opposition believes the project can still advance if...
Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT) will receive a federal grant to help fund a transit study. The study is set to investigate a new corridor known as NEXTransit, which will connect Oakland’s neighborhoods to its universities and hospitals. The study will look into several transit options that will integrate into the existing bus and light rail...
NOTE: An earlier version of this post originally appeared on December 4th, 2009 (yup, that’s over 7 years ago, kids). At that time, the report “City of Hamilton Higher Order Transit Network Strategy” was available online. Unfortunately, it is no longer available. Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know and that’s really nobody’s fault....
I recently met someone who disapproves of this whole Urban Gondola concept – which is fine, you’re entitled to your own opinion. He said it’s hard enough to get his grandmother to ride the subway (because she finds it terrifying), let alone a gondola. According to The Grandmother Test (yeah, it should be called that)...
A couple of years back, Volkswagen came up with a brilliant viral marketing campaign known as The Fun Theory. The basic idea being that “fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better” (their words, not mine). The shorthand for the theory was the very public transformation of a subway stairwell into...
A thought experiment: You’re now the owner of the world’s largest cable gondola transit manufacturer on the planet. This could be a fictional company or a real company; it doesn’t matter. You’re told by your CEO that three (and only three) innovations must be developed to ensure the technology’s viability into the future. One innovation...
There exists an almost century-old anecdote about a German aerodynamicist and a bumblebee. Over dinner, the aerodynamicist remarked to a biologist that – according to his calculations and the accepted theory of the day – a bumblebee was incapable of flight. This, of course, wasn’t true. Bumblebees could fly (still do, I believe) and it didn’t...
Perhaps the most common question we’re asked about Urban Gondolas and Cable Propelled Transit is the safety question. Namely, are they safe? And while anecdotally we’ve always known them to be a remarkably safe technology, gathering clear statistical proof has been very difficult. Most countries don’t have readily available access to numbers on this and...