Gondolas as Mass-Transit

[Me2005]

Link

The Golden Age of Gondolas Might Be Just Around the Corner

Laugh all you want (or cower in fear), but cable-drawn aerial transportation just might be the next big thing.

To hear the evangelists tell it, the skyborne pods that have ferried skiers through the Alps for most of the last century are an integral part of the future of urban transport. Cheaper than terrestrial fixed guideway transit and quicker to build, the gondola is finally taking its rightful place in the urban landscape.

"Depending on how you measure it," says Steven Dale of the Gondola Project, "it is the fastest growing transportation method in the world."
The gondola renaissance began, more or less, with Medellín.

Comparatively, that is. Until the last decade, the idea of relying largely on gondolas for mass transit was considered comical, if it was considered at all. Into the 1990s, Dale says, "there was no literature. There was nothing."

Today, as gondola construction accelerates, Dale's Gondola Project is probably the single most valuable database on the subject. And yet when the talk turns to gondolas, there are still two kinds of people in the world: those who think the gondola is the answer to a city's short-range transportation needs, and those who can't understand why everyone is talking about those tippy Venetian boats.

It's a strong dichotomy, and one that seems to imply that the gondolistas are either members of a insular transit cult or miles ahead of the rest of us.

Perhaps it's a little of both.

The gondola renaissance began, more or less, with Medellín. In 2004, the Colombian city built a gondola to connect one of its sprawling hillside neighborhoods to the trunk line of the Metro, which runs along the fold of the valley. The success of that project inspired the construction of two more lines, which in turn helped make the city an international destination for mayors and urban thinkers, and the winner of the Urban Land Institute’s Innovation City of the Year last month.

Medellín had imitators. In 2007, Portland, Oregon, built a tramway to connect a university campus to downtown. New York City renovated its Roosevelt Island Tram in 2010. In 2009, Manizales, Colombia, installed a gondola system in imitation of Medellin. The next year, Caracas built one; the year after, Rio de Janeiro did too.

Last year, London built an aerial cable crossing the Thames, and in the fall, La Paz announced it will build the world's largest gondola transit network, with eleven stations and over seven miles of cable. The French cities of Brest and Toulouse will complete cable transport in 2015 and 2017, respectively.

So why is this only happening now? Cable-drawn transport has existed for thousands of years, and was widely used during the 19th century in mines and at mills. Like industrial technologies before it, the machinery slowly crept into city life nearly 150 years ago.

Well-known to Americans are the cable cars of San Francisco, the first of which was developed in 1873. Despite their resemblance to the common streetcar, these vehicles have more in structural common with gondolas and trams. Alpine cities like Grenoble installed aerial cable transport as early as 1934. Cable transport was an early proposed alternative to the project that became the Paris Métro.

But as the 20th century progressed, the technology retreated to the mountains. Most of San Francisco’s cable cars were replaced with streetcars and later buses. The two companies that manufacture cable systems, Leitner-Poma and Doppelmayr, seemed little interested in hawking their wares to cities, and few planners came a-calling. Advances like two-speed cables were developed for skiers, and their potential as urban people-movers was largely overlooked.

The technology never entirely disappeared from cities, of course. The Roosevelt Island Tramway was completed in 1976 (albeit as a stopgap while subway service to the island was under construction). As transportation to hilltop monuments around the world, aerial transit continued to be popular: the tram to Rio's Sugarloaf opened in 1912; to Bogota's Monserrate in 1955; to Jounieh's Our Lady of Lebanon in 1965. The mountainous cities of Algeria are threaded with gondolas that serve both tourists and commuters.
As the 20th century progressed, the technology retreated to the mountains.

But until the last couple decades, there was very little information on gondolas and trams as a transit device.

"In the late '80s and early '90s," Dale says, "the planning profession's understanding of the technology was 180 degrees inaccurate – they thought the technology was expensive, dangerous, slow. They thought it wouldn't move enough people. Difficult to procure, difficult to implement – everything you know if you're familiar with the technology is demonstrably false."

And beyond that, according to Assman Ekkehard, a marketing director for Doppelmayr, there was an image problem. "Most people — politicians, the public itself, architects, the people who are doing the plans for cities, traffic specialists — they also had, and still sometimes have this association: ropeways are good for tourists, they're good for bringing people up the mountain, but they're not a good means of transport."

That's beginning to change, Ekkehard believes. "People see cities with ropeways and they see it works," he says. "It’s a very reasonable means of transit – you don’t need a lot of infrastructure. They need very little space. They're very environmentally friendly."

But perhaps more importantly in an era of diminished public funds, they can be built quickly and cheaply.

"It's very low-cost compared to an alternative," says Edward Neumann, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and author of the paper “The past, present and future of urban cable propelled people movers.” In Toulouse, for example, the proposed gondola route will be two to three times less expensive than installing a streetcar.

Michael McDaniel, who is trying to convince Austin, Texas, to develop a transit network of gondolas, framed the costs like this in an interview with Marketplace:

"Running subway lines under a city can cost about $400 million per mile. Light rails systems run about $36 million per mile. But the aerial ropeways required to run gondolas cost just $3 million to $12 million to install per mile."

It's not that boosters think aerial transit can or should render fixed guideways on the ground obsolete. Theirs is the more modest claim that in certain cases, cable-drawn is the best solution.

That doesn't just mean crossing rivers (as in New York) climbing mountains (as in Portland) or bridging gorges (as in Constantine). Perhaps more important than the plans for Brest and Toulouse is the scheme for Créteil, a suburban township southeast of Paris and the terminus of the Paris Métro’s Line 8.

Rather than argue for a costly extension of the Métro, the city plans to build a four-stop gondola connecting the terminus to the neighboring city of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. Gondolas can carry up to 6,000 persons per hour per direction, a rate competitive with the practical capacity of light rail and for a fraction of the price. If the system at Créteil (2016-18) is a success, the gondola may prove the exemplary solution to the "first mile problem" of integrating commuters on the periphery of a mass transit system.
Theirs is the more modest claim that in certain cases, cable-drawn is the best solution.

There have been growing pains. Critics have called the Rio gondola an instrument of gentrification and "de-densification," intended to push out rather than serve residents of the favela it runs through. The Portland project cost nearly four times the projections, and the current round-trip fare ($4 for tourists) is more than twice the initial estimates.

Worse still has been the saga of the Emirates Air Line, the towering gondola inaugurated for the London Olympics last summer. Like cable-drawn transit in Portland, New York, Medellin, and Rio, it was framed as an addition to the city's transit network. It appears on the Tube Map, is accessible via Oystercard, and is run by Transport for London. But though the cable car registered over 1.5 million trips between June and November, exceeding expectations, it proved virtually incapable of attracting commuters: in the two months after the Games ended in September, only one in ten thousand journeys was a discounted commuter fare. Officials remain optimistic that number will grow as the area served continues to develop.

Dale thinks the London system was an unfortunate anomaly. Contrary to government marketing, he says, the route is plainly not intended to serve commuters.

Beyond that, though, gondola systems face an uphill battle in the public opinion. They look, frankly, silly and constitute something of a political gamble. Aesthetically, it's unclear if they will sit well with preservationists or neighbors. And they tend to unnerve commuters (and planners) much the way underground journeys did during the early days of subway construction. (Studies indicate that claustrophobia and acrophobia each affect approximately 5 percent of the population)

"You apply a stricter standard to new ideas than you do to old ideas," Dale notes.

And then, at least in the United States, there's the language barrier: we tend to associate gondolas with Venice, cable cars with San Francisco, trams with streetcars. Would you want to be suspended 100 feet in the air from a "ropeway"? If cable-drawn aerial transportation is going to catch on in U.S. cities, it will need to win over minds and mouths alike. And perhaps stomachs, too.

It's an older article (April 2013), but with the solar roads discussion recently (and over the summer), I got thinking about transportation. Most mass-transit plans don't work well in sprawling Western US (and Canada, and other post-automobile) cities. It's cheap to run cable, and you can fit towers on much less land area than roads or rails. Could this provide a realistic solution to crowded roads in sprawling locals?

[Elheru Aran]

Here I was thinking Venice...

[Ahriman238]

Always snicker when someone claims their group/cause is the 'fastest growing.' Especially if it's something new.

[Elheru Aran]

OK, now that I'm past the "lolwut? Venice? Gondolas? Mass transit?" bit...

Highly unlikely for a simple reason: You spend a lot more effort moving a car from point A to point B through the air on a cable, than you do putting it on wheels. Unless you set up some kind of funky switching system (and by the way, where are all the support towers going to be planted? On-off platforms? Winching towers and engines? Etc?), the gondolas are limited to one path. A ground vehicle can take multiple paths as necessary. Don't forget the safety issues as well. An accident 50 feet above ground level is far more dangerous than one at ground level.

Streetcars are a more practical approach using similar principles. So are buses.

Now if the cables were some super-material like carbon nanotubes, guaranteed not to break ever, the gondolas could be set up for a ridiculously cheap price, and various other variables happen to match up, sure, it could work. As it is? There are cheaper answers to the same problem.

[Me2005]

Apologies for butchering your quotes; the points fit together better this way.

OK, now that I'm past the "lolwut? Venice? Gondolas? Mass transit?" bit...

Unless you set up some kind of funky switching system (and by the way, where are all the support towers going to be planted? On-off platforms? Winching towers and engines? Etc?), the gondolas are limited to one path.

All that infrastructure takes up much less space than a new road or rail the same length would, so I don't see the issue. In crowded cities/suburbs, you can't build a new road, but you could find a few 10x10' plots to plant towers and room for endpoints.

Highly unlikely for a simple reason: You spend a lot more effort moving a car from point A to point B through the air on a cable, than you do putting it on wheels. ...Streetcars are a more practical approach using similar principles. So are buses. ... A ground vehicle can take multiple paths as necessary.

This is for mass transit - point-to-point is desirable to attract more passengers; and in this case, you'd deliver them to or pick up from other mass-transit stations. Busses and cars don't solve the problem of traffic-clogged streets. I'm also not convinced that it takes so much more effort to spin the cable, especially when the cable system's cars don't need the added mass of a power plant and fuel and are just passenger/cargo cabs.

Don't forget the safety issues as well. An accident 50 feet above ground level is far more dangerous than one at ground level. ...Now if the cables were some super-material like carbon nanotubes, guaranteed not to break ever, the gondolas could be set up for a ridiculously cheap price, and various other variables happen to match up, sure, it could work.

I forget if it was from that article or somewhere else, but they claimed there have been 0 accidents involving gondolas at mountain resorts since the early 90's. The fact that private resorts can afford to install and maintain them in mountainous terrain says something about their cost and safety as well.

As it is? There are cheaper answers to the same problem.

Are there? Light rail and subways are mentioned in the article as being magnitudes more expensive. Roads are in the millions/mile too, and there isn't space for more roads around here.

[Darth Tanner]

All that infrastructure takes up much less space than a new road or rail the same length would

Except that the start/stop stations are going to be either be up in the air and hugely expensive, hard to access and intrusive or take up lots of space with the cars coming down to meet them. If you have it high enough that it won't interfere with traffic or buildings its going to have pretty hefty support columns too.

The London cable car system over the Thames costs £8.80 return for a 1km trip!

Obviously its more for the tourists than a practical transport measure (records show only 4 people with Oyster cards use it as part of their daily commute) but its not exactly a good demonstration of what you could achieve and its running around 10% of its capacity now the Olympics are over.

[salm]

If you´ve ever taken the gondolas in Medellin you know that it can work very well. They´ve basically got one metro train that goes through the city. At a lot of metro stations there are cable car stations going up the hill side. over the favellas and drop you off at the top of the favelas. It is also dirt cheap.
This makes sense in a city that is basically a valley in the mountan which spreads up the hills. Furthermore the favelas are very densly populated so it is difficult and expensive to build decent roads or even tracks.
Gondolas do make sense in some places.
The stations are not up in the air. Why should they be? Have you ever seen a skiing lift and I bet they´re vastly cheaper than a subway or metro station.

[Me2005]

All that infrastructure takes up much less space than a new road or rail the same length would

Except that the start/stop stations are going to be either be up in the air and hugely expensive, hard to access and intrusive or take up lots of space with the cars coming down to meet them. If you have it high enough that it won't interfere with traffic or buildings its going to have pretty hefty support columns too.

You could build it onto the top or side of a building easy enough. Around here (Western USA), we have enough space where that wouldn't be an issue though. Taking up a few thousand square feet on either end vs. building a new road is acceptable. Building them high enough that they're above traffic would be easy, and most of the area I'd think it'd most benefit isn't more than 2-3 stories. These things can go pretty steeply up and down too (they are used in mountains, after all), so I'm not sure it'd be that big of an issue.

The London cable car system over the Thames costs £8.80 return for a 1km trip!

Obviously its more for the tourists than a practical transport measure (records show only 4 people with Oyster cards use it as part of their daily commute) but its not exactly a good demonstration of what you could achieve and its running around 10% of its capacity now the Olympics are over.

I hear the London system is set up with end points already on major commute corridors and not near any residential areas - so it doesn't make sense to go use that when you can keep riding the subway. I'm thinking this kind of thing would be better in, say, LA, Seattle, San Fransisco, Portland (which has one going up the hill already), San Diego, and etc., where development is much more sprawling than London.

[LaCroix]

London cable car is here:

https://www.google.at/maps/place/Emirat ... 78f8?hl=de

and goes right northeast to the edge of the docks right south of Royal Victoria on the DLR.

So basically, it has been built in paralell to an existing subway line (Jubilee).
No wonder nobody uses it. You need to exit the DLR and walk a block to take the gondola. Or walk another block to Jubilee.
No matter from where you're coming from, it's easier to ride the extra station to Canning Town and take the other line.

[salm]

The way I understand it the London cable car is meant more as a tourist attraction than as a means of normal mass transit and was implemented rather badly.
The Medellin cable cars on the other hand are a huge success, in fact so successfull that Rio de Jaineiro and Caracass copied them.

[Elheru Aran]

I will note that Medellin is very hilly, lots of slopes, being built in a mountain valley as it is. As such cable cars do make sense as they're a little more useful in such a setting. In a relatively flat city though, perhaps not so much.

[PKRudeBoy]

I think it would also depend on the density of the city as well. Most established cities really don't have the space to expand traffic at ground level. Which leaves going either up or down, and down goes from merely very expensive to absolutely ludicrously expensive, depending on the city. Now I'm picturing Manhattan with an intricate web of gondolas going from skyscraper to skyscraper.

[LaCroix]

Cable cars make sense in every setting that needs to handle more traffic than there is space for it.

Trains and busses would also use the space available for roads, while a subway or cable car uses space not used, yet.
A subway would add a new means of transit below the congested streets or housing, while a cable car can easily be built as a second story above the existing streets, simply by replacing some of the street light masts with sturdier versions, and refitting relatively small buildings at each end point.

With detachable coupling gondolas, you can even have stations along the line with no very little extra investment. And detaching gondolas would be a standard solution for such a structure, I'd think. Especially as it means that all passengers will be boarding continuously, which means you need less of a platform for the waiting ones.

And all can be built in very short time, once the plans are done - you just need to weld, install and go. Compare this with the need to dill tunnels for years with a subway, the need for expensive trains, ventilation, building stations, (as mentioned above, a subway will cost between 30 and 100 times as much per kilometer) and this becomes a very attractive option, soon.

edit:

as you can see, the masts are barely the size of a parking spot, probably half of one, and spaced pretty far apart. Not much space requirement for a system that transports 30000 people per day. Two public lines, 2km and 3km long, each having 4 stations, 8 in total.

[Me2005]

...as you can see, the masts are barely the size of a parking spot, probably half of one, and spaced pretty far apart.

Shoot, you could stick those in a suicide lane or highway median without touching traffic flow and parking capacity pretty easily.

Any ideas on what it costs to run?

[LaCroix]

Any ideas on what it costs to run?

Apart from the fact that you already saved millions in not building a subway, it's cheap enough to run that they included these 1.8 and 2.7 km long sections in the public grid, no surcharge. They also plan to start construction on two more lines in 2015.

After a bit of googling the spanish side of the web, I have found no mentions of operational costs, but I know that linea L is not public (it's mostly a touristic line to a park) and goes from Santo Domingo to Parque Arvi, about 4,6 km, and you pay about 2US$ for a one-way ride if you don't have a public transit card. I don't know if that is subsidized, but since we're talking about a tourist price, it's probably not.

[ray245]

How fast can Gondolas go? If it doesn't go as fast as a subway, people would still want to take the faster option instead. Especially in a massive city like New York or London.

[Borgholio]

How fast can Gondolas go? If it doesn't go as fast as a subway, people would still want to take the faster option instead. Especially in a massive city like New York or London.

They go at the speed of a slow run or a fast jog. But keep in mind if the project has not started yet, then the slower option at 1/10 the cost might still be the better choice, since you can get 10 complete gondola routes for the price of one subway line.

[ray245]

How fast can Gondolas go? If it doesn't go as fast as a subway, people would still want to take the faster option instead. Especially in a massive city like New York or London.

They go at the speed of a slow run or a fast jog. But keep in mind if the project has not started yet, then the slower option at 1/10 the cost might still be the better choice, since you can get 10 complete gondola routes for the price of one subway line.

It would be bad at rush hour in a major city though. You have massive queue with people wanting to get home as soon as possible. Even if it is cheaper, it can be exhausting for people having to travel from one end of the city to the other end.

[Me2005]

How fast can Gondolas go? If it doesn't go as fast as a subway, people would still want to take the faster option instead. Especially in a massive city like New York or London.

Looks like +/-8 m/s. I'd give it more running on the flat in most cities compared to the design use, but I don't know if that's how it works. It'll go over everything though, so it can travel a more direct line than, say, a bus.

But that isn't the point, what is is that this wouldn't be a solution for cities with existing subway systems (that aren't also overcrowded). It'd be one for cities with no mass transit solution and crowded roads, as a part of a larger mass-transit network - these might be in and between cities with links to high speed rail, light rail, or bus lines. These are cheaper to build though, and it sounds like they can run on 750 Kw motors (what that means in terms of operation, I do not know).

It would be bad at rush hour in a major city though. You have massive queue with people wanting to get home as soon as possible. Even if it is cheaper, it can be exhausting for people having to travel from one end of the city to the other end.

Throughput can easily be upwards of 2,000 people/hr; and building a second (or third, or fourth) line parallel to the first would be trivial if you planned the towers for it in the first place.

But keep in mind if the project has not started yet, then the slower option at 1/10 the cost might still be the better choice, since you can get 10 complete gondola routes for the price of one subway line.

From the article above, you'd get 33-133 gondola routes per subway line.

[Borgholio]

From the article above, you'd get 33-133 gondola routes per subway line.

Even better then. It would probably be a good solution to use gondolas as a way to get to light rail lines or subways. Here in the LA Area the Metrolink train doesn't always go everywhere you need it to, so it's not at full capacity. If each Metrolink stop had a Gondola system to distribute passengers to several nearby Park and Rides, that would greatly increase ridership.

[Me2005]

From the article above, you'd get 33-133 gondola routes per subway line.

Even better then. It would probably be a good solution to use gondolas as a way to get to light rail lines or subways. Here in the LA Area the Metrolink train doesn't always go everywhere you need it to, so it's not at full capacity. If each Metrolink stop had a Gondola system to distribute passengers to several nearby Park and Rides, that would greatly increase ridership.

My thinking nearly exactly. I'd almost think that the gondolas could be more local than that though, stopping within reasonable walking distance of most neighborhoods. That wouldn't even be infeasible if they stopped at schools, which are already pretty local-travel oriented. Perhaps with frequent enough stops buses wouldn't be necessary, for further operational savings.

[General Zod]

We have a gondola for Roosevelt Island in New York. I wouldn't call it terribly fast or efficient, and I can see a lot of complications in hooking up multiple tram cars. I can see it as a good supplement for crossing rivers and other impasses where building a subway would be difficult, but not as a full blown replacement.

[Starglider]

You have literally no idea what you are talking about.

Highly unlikely for a simple reason: You spend a lot more effort moving a car from point A to point B through the air on a cable, than you do putting it on wheels.

Why? Do you understand the energy usage and friction sources in both systems? Do you realise that gondola systems are counterbalanced and use one or two large efficient motors for the whole system, with highly efficient continuously lubricated bearings? Gondola systems only need to brake and accelerate the cars at stations, unlike a bus which is constantly braking and accelerating due to traffic, losing energy to the suspension and tires particularly when cornering. Did you even begin to consider the actual physics and engineering rather than spouting off your first naive intuition?

Unless you set up some kind of funky switching system, the gondolas are limited to one path.

So? Light rail, tram and metro systems are limited to one path (in normal passenger service), even buses take a fixed route unless there are roadworks. In actual fact gondolas are more efficient for a mesh network than other systems, because the continuous service means that passengers can change from one line to another with minimal waiting.

Don't forget the safety issues as well. An accident 50 feet above ground level is far more dangerous than one at ground level.

Accidents are much less likely because the vehicle is not subjected to traffic. Buses are constantly involved in traffic accidents, even light rail has accidents at level crossings and due to signal failures. Gondola failure is rare and injuries extremely rare; for the few that do occur, most recent accidents involved aircraft hitting cables which won't be an issue in an urban setting.

Streetcars are a more practical approach using similar principles. So are buses.

Only for installation cost but if that was the only concern no one would ever build subways, trams or railways.

Now if the cables were some super-material like carbon nanotubes, guaranteed not to break ever, the gondolas could be set up for a ridiculously cheap price,

Cable strength is a total non-issue. Cables basically never break under normal use and cable strength is not a limiting factor for any relevant system design parameter. Tower spacing is determined by turns in the route and acceptable cabin sway, not cable strength.

As it is? There are cheaper answers to the same problem.

As the quoted article stated, gondolas are usually cheaper than trams and light rail and always much cheaper than subway. Buses do not solve the same problems otherwise no-one would build trams or light rail.

[General Zod]

Can a gondola system move the same volume of people over the same distances as rail? That's the biggest problem I see.

[Starglider]

Gondola lift capacity (single link) is 2000 to 6000 people/hour depending on whether you use single cable or multi (drive + support) cable. To pick a couple of local examples, light rail capacity is about 1600 (South London TramLink) to 5500 (London Docklands Light Railway core) people per hour depending on whether you use fully segregated track and advanced signals/controls. I'd note that the light rail capacity assumes standing passengers packed to capacity, whereas gondolas are usually all-seater. For comparison London deep tube lines have a capacity of approx 15,000* people/hour and London CrossRail (underground heavy rail) will have a capacity of approx 20,000 people/hour, but obviously the infrastructure cost for those is extreme.

* Officially; in practice people squash in so tightly for rush hour central segments that the actual peak capacity is probably at least 10% more.