With Subway in the Sky, Valley Meets Plateau
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With Subway in the Sky, Valley Meets Plateau
1–10 of 11 posts
Re: With Subway in the Sky, Valley Meets Plateau
#2Check out Nick Chu's blog, the Gondola Project [0], where he's been documenting urban gondolas around the world for years.
Like La Paz, mountainous Medellin, Colombia has been building a system of gondolas [1], the first line of which opened in 2004. There's a $500 million system under construction in Lagos, Nigeria. And there are many smaller projects getting started elsewhere, including possibly in Hamburg, Germany, where voters will decide this week whether to fund a cable car over the Elbe.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Metrocable_%28Med...
Re: With Subway in the Sky, Valley Meets Plateau
#3Similar Aerial tramway are deployed in Algeria , where they are used as a transport cars and not as a tourist cars, the system is quite useful, each year it transport more than a million passenger.
http://gondolaproject.com/category/installations/algerian-go...
http://www.strmtg.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/cabl...
Re: With Subway in the Sky, Valley Meets Plateau
#4Check out Nick Chu's blog, the Gondola Project [0], where he's been documenting urban gondolas around the world for years. Like La Paz, mountainous Medellin, Colombia has been building a system of gondolas [1], the first line of which opened in 2004. There's a $500 million system under construction in Lagos, Nigeria. And there are many smaller projects getting started elsewhere, including possibly in Hamburg, Germany…
Caracas and Rio, too.
Re: With Subway in the Sky, Valley Meets Plateau
#5I saw an interesting TEDx presentation by Jared Ficklin pertaining to gondola systems as mass transit in a cit and how to get the American public to buy into it[0].
Re: With Subway in the Sky, Valley Meets Plateau
#6This is pretty fascinating (though my fear of heights would not make me a happy rider of these).
But the title really really bugs me. Subway in the sky? Do we call tramways subways on the ground?
Re: With Subway in the Sky, Valley Meets Plateau
#7How does the cost of this compare to elevated rail? Here in Miami we have a very very limited 2 line elevated rail [0] that the estimates to expand it run in the tens of billions of $. The idea of building retail into the parking garage structure/stations is intriguing as it could get private developers to underwrite the costs.
My other question would be (since I'm thinking Miami here), how would these cable systems fare against hurricanes? I assume the cars would just be docked in a safe building (parking garage structure).
Re: With Subway in the Sky, Valley Meets Plateau
#8How does the cost of this compare to elevated rail? Here in Miami we have a very very limited 2 line elevated rail [0] that the estimates to expand it run in the tens of billions of $. The idea of building retail into the parking garage structure/stations is intriguing as it could get private developers to underwrite the costs. My other question would be (since I'm thinking Miami here), how would these cable systems…
Elevated rail, even monorail, is considerably more expensive, but also provides far higher capacity. You can also increase capacity on a train line relatively easily with shorter intervals and longer trains, while a gondola's carrying capacity is essentially fixed.
Rough comparison between three recent 3rd-world systems:
- La Paz gondola: 3000 passengers per hour per direction (pphpd), ~$10m/km
- Mumbai Monorail: 10,000 pphpd, ~$20m/km
- BTS Skytrain, Bangkok: >30,000 pphpd, >$100m/km (on recent extensions)
Gondolas make sense in hilly locales where hurricanes are not a threat (like La Paz), they'd be a non-starter for both reasons in Miami.
Re: With Subway in the Sky, Valley Meets Plateau
#9How does the cost of this compare to elevated rail? Here in Miami we have a very very limited 2 line elevated rail [0] that the estimates to expand it run in the tens of billions of $. The idea of building retail into the parking garage structure/stations is intriguing as it could get private developers to underwrite the costs. My other question would be (since I'm thinking Miami here), how would these cable systems…
Elevated rail, even monorail, is considerably more expensive, but also provides far higher capacity. You can also increase capacity on a train line relatively easily with shorter intervals and longer trains, while a gondola's carrying capacity is essentially fixed. Rough comparison between three recent 3rd-world systems: - La Paz gondola: 3000 passengers per hour per direction (pphpd), ~$10m/km - Mumbai Monorail: 10,…
I'm pretty sure a gondola can hold its own in a hurricane (as long as it isn't running). Most urban systems use the same technology as alpine systems, which have to withstand harsh blizzards.
Re: With Subway in the Sky, Valley Meets Plateau
#10I saw an interesting TEDx presentation by Jared Ficklin pertaining to gondola systems as mass transit in a cit and how to get the American public to buy into it[0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoQmgSOB9n0
This proposal was for a way to solve Austin's traffic problems. Given the geography around here (hills, lakes, NIMBYs), I think it's a plausible solution. But it looks like the city council is going to put streetcars (urban rail) on the ballot at a starting cost of $600 million.