Does Your City Need a Gondola? 

Being from Colombia, Medellín's MetroCable was a gamechanger when it was introduced, the time reduction was considerable and it improved the lives of many people in hard to reach parts of the city. Great video!

There is a gondola in my city (Saint-Denis, Réunion island, France) with 5 station and even if it is as fast as a bus (at least from where i live to the terminus) you can't beat that frequency, 37 second of waiting time it's so relaxing!

Funny… I was just in Medellín las week. The gondola system there is amazing…. one really cool thing over there is that they did not only use it to connect the poor urban settlements on the hills to the city and the main metro lines… but also to connect those areas to a huge natural reserve…. which is another gerat application for gondolas… bring people from urban areas to recreational areas (which may be sensitive natural environments) to which you otherwise would not be able to provide mass transit

My city (Chorzów, Poland) used to have 3 gandola lines in a triangle shape, and it was quite useful (only way of transit through a huge Park - few times larger than Central Park). Unfortunately it has been reduced to only one, which is pretty much redundant with a tram line, so it's only a tourist attraction now.

I travelled around colombia a month ago and got a chance to appreciate the transportation system in Medellin. Is is so amazing what they managed to do there. For me as a european, the gondolas are associated with some luxurious ski resorts in Switzerland, Austria, France. It was so unexpected to see the gondolas as a means of transport, primarily designed for the "poor" neighborhoods. The other thing that surprized me - the metro in Medellin is much cleaner than in most European cities. It seems that locals in Medellin appreciate their transport more and they treat it with care and respect.

The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) is determining whether to install a gondola or expand bus lanes up Little Cottonwood Canyon in Salt Lake County, Utah. The primary users of the system would be winter recreationalists, though it is anticipated tourist will also come simply to ride the gondola. There is a lot of opposition to the project, many citing environmental concerns and little impact on traffic (it can understandably get really bad during the ski season). I personally am in favor of the proposed system, for many of the reasons discussed in RMTransit's video.

There is talk of using gondolas to travel between Downtown Kansas City, Missouri and Downtown Kansas City, Kansas - both of which are on high hills overlooking the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, with the low-lying West Bottoms district in between.

A lot of your footage is from the Cablebus system in Mexico City which you barely mention! While it's one of the newest, it's now the longest, I believe (at least if you also count the Mexicable in the northern section of the metro area). When you do that separate vid, I hope you cover Line 3, which is being built rn along the edge of the 4 sections of Chapultepec Park (also undergoing significant renovation). That one will be super popular IMO.

The metrocable in Medellin was and still is a game changer for the city, making it more united and connected, whilst being pretty affordable to construct. Also, Tourists love them!, pretty good video as always!

There are plans for a gondola system in Pittsburgh and I think they actually make sense given the hilly terrain and river crossings. We already have 2 furniculars (and used to have 17 before most were removed). The planned gondola will travel over/through a historically underserved neighborhood that is on top of a steep hill and connect it with jobs and other transit modes to both the north and south, crossing a river in the process

India has launched a new project called "Parvatmala" meaning "Necklace on mountain" which is a big project to make 250 new ropeway systems in the country including a few urban Gondola systems. The city of Shimla in Northern India is first in the list with first phase having 15 stations over 15 km of network costing about 200 million USD approved. Other cities like Aizawl and Gangtok are next in the list. Varanasi which is not on hills but really crowded and congested is also looking to build such a system.

Your channel produces some of my favourite content man. As a geography student, I often watch your videos as a means to find discover more about how certain places operate. I thought I’d just say a massive thank you! This is truly S tier content. 👍😎

In the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo has a gondola system connected to its metro line 2. A second gondola line is under construction and set to open later this year.

My city of Santo Domingo has been investing in gondolas transport (teleférico) with a 2nd line about to open next month. My opinion is mixed actually, specially for this new upcoming line. I think an express busway would've been cheaper, faster and adds more capacity. The first line is a bit more justifiable since it crosses 2 rivers (the same river technically) over thousands of improvised homes (aka, slums), which makes construction of bridges difficult in that area. I agree with you, this mode of transport is good for specific cases, but in my opinion not for *mass* transit. Though given that is way cheaper to construct compared to trams, I think it's an 'okay' temporary solution were the terrain/land use requires it, specially in low-income countries like mine. Medellín's case makes total sense imo though.

We must differentiate GadgetBahns and NicheBahns apart from each other!

The former capital of Germany, Bonn, is planning a gondola as part of their public transit network. It is supposed to link the Venusberg, the former government area and Ramersdorf on the other side of the Rhine making connections with the Stadtbahn and S-Bahn. There is a formal evaluation procedure to determine if a public transit project is justified and the planned route passed that test, so more detailed planning is being done now.

The one I've actually ridden is the Singapore Cable Car (despite its name, actually a gondola system). It's a pleasant way to get to and around the resort island of Sentosa, but in practice it's more a pricey tourist attraction than a general-purpose transit system. You can make the same trips by monorail and bus for much less (yes, this is a system exceeded in practicality by a monorail). The gondola does go to a mountaintop on the main island where it makes more sense.

There is a fully underground funicular climbing up the hillside in the city of Haifa (Israel) complete with intermediate stations too. On a different track, cable cars do have specific safety requirements which if not observed could result with fatalities, as witnessed in Northern Italy in the past few years. With funiculars there is a gravity option, as used in the Lynton & Lynmouth Cliff Railway which uses water to make the upper car heavier and as it descends it pulls up the lower car!

There was a load of potential in London for a gondola but the one we have misses the mark on so many things. It runs parallel to other routes, is made redundant by non-parallel routes like the DLR and Elizabeth Line from Woolwich which both cross the river and take me to the ExCeL centre it connects to, its northern stop is not directly outside the ExCeL so some people may think it’s not that convenient, it isn’t part of the standard travel fare pricing, plus it is forced to close when there’s high wind. Better places for it might have been: - further downstream where the River Thames gets wider and there are fewer crossings. - Waterloo and City Line alternative/replacement, perfect because of its constant throughput, minimal footprint, plus can probably run on Sundays with little staffing and even close for maintenance on Sunday without major disruption. Better view too. The downsides being it’s susceptible to wind and the capacity might not be enough. - Hammersmith where the historic listed bridge was forced to close to traffic indefinitely and at one point closed to pedestrians for about a year.

Missed opportunity to show the Portland Tram to the University. I know it's not a "gondola"... but it has a gorgeous design and is quite popular along with having the same issues with "privacy" over people's houses and the contention in that.

I think my hometown, Hamilton, Ontario, could probably use one, as another way of getting up and down the Niagara Escarpment (known locally as "The Mountain"). We used to have a similar system -- the Hamilton Incline Railway -- but it was shut down in the 1940s. My husband and I sometimes go on hikes on the Escarpment and you can still see the big concrete blocks that used to anchor the Incline Railway.

So here in cologne there's also one gondola, spanning across the river Rhine. It was built as a tourist attraction, and operates as one (closes in winter, except for advent). Even though I've lived here for 14 years now, I have never ridden on it once. Also it's not well connected to any other part of transit

12:30 Bilbao (or rather it’s suburbs) actually have outdoor moving walkways in places such as Portugalete (which is one of the neighbourhoods served by the Bizkaia bridge)

In 2017 I worked in the studio that made the projects of the Light Blue line building stations from Mi Teleférico, Bolivia. I was amazed by the "spiderweb" that was becoming the system at the time. I can add a few things: - Entire Bolivia had (not sure if it still has) similar GDP to Bogotá. So, there was not so much money at the table. - La Paz + El Alto is a highly topographic region with clay soils, so solutions such as LRT, Metro, and others were not only more expensive but, served only the downtown, and that wasn't the goal. - The other goal, like in Medellín, was also to build squares, libraries, schools, theatres, markets, etc. in the slums, not only to move people. Now Mi Teleférico has 32km and 38 stations, and the year before the pandemic (2019) 97 million trips were made in it, around 14% of the total trips.

I’m so glad that Medellín finally made the channel! I’m moving there next year, it is such a game changer in specific hilly and dense Latin American contexts.

Although gondolas or cable cars have existed for decades throughout the world as a means of tourist transport, the city of Medellin was the first to implement them as a means of mass public transport within a city. Currently, in Medellin there are 6 gondola lines linked to the metro and the tram and a few months ago the current mayor announced the creation of 5 more gondola lines for medellin, this type of initiative has made medellin a global benchmark for urban planning, winner of the title as the most innovative city in the world in 2013 and the world city Prize (Lee Kwan Yeu Award) which is considered the Nobel Prize for Global Urbanism in 2016, being the only Latin American city to win this recognition, also since 2019 Medellin is the only Latin American headquarters for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Yes. My city is hilly, much of it far too steep for trams, we'd need a funicular railway... We have a ski lift, and I've been saying for years they should do more with the idea.

Adam Something recently did a video on a gadgetbahn urban gondola system call Swyft Cities. It is a gondola system that has multi route individualized 'pods" that let people choose their get on and off point no matter where on the system they are at. And here's the kicker, the cables are stationary and doesn't move. The gondola/pods themselves has motors on the wheels to propel them on the cables, so the cables are basically just tracks.

Gondolas make sense for their cost effectiveness, their ability to adapt to very difficult terrain, and because they are relatively fast to build with minimal disruptions compared to a tram. However, I sometimes have the impression that the gondolas are some kind of excuse for towns to avoid building more expensive but way more useful transit solutions. They sell them as cheap and cool whilst the only question should be: "Is it worth it ?".

Wouldn't a gondola set up like that work in Hamilton to bring people down from the mountain to the city, and two lines down could connect with light rail

HI Reece, I think Montreal should have a gondola for Mount-Royal and its park. There was once a funicular that existed in the early 20th century that brought people from the eastern side of Mount-Royal to the top of the mountain. This would make the park more accesible,

Watching this immediately gives me some inspiration for a midground system, use overhead conveyors instead of cables, which gives you a bit more cost but ease of maintenance of a chain that can be maintained in pieces and simple guide rail that bolts together. Overhead power/free conveyors give you the ability to add stops where it disconnects from power anywhere you want before automatically reconnecting in various ways, allows easy track switching, can resist wind or travel angle influence, and can follow more of a route than direct point to point like a gondola system. Still not as good as light rail, but easier to tuck in, over, and around existing structures and handle greater changes in elevation. Somewhere between a gondola and a much less limited suspended monorail

Thank you for offering a colder take on gondolas than other urbanist channels. This tendency to just hawk the new hot thing that they think is cool, rather than objectively do an analysis of alternatives to determine what works best, is why planners, civil engineers, and even just regular people don’t take urbanists seriously, even though they have some valuable ideas and suggestions. Especially so in the US. To paraphrase Finding Nemo, if we want to change the public stigma surrounding railfans, transit advocates, urbanists, etc., we need to first change ourselves as communities. In particular, such communities need to be seen as hubs of credible, informed discussion, to show professionals we are worthy of being taken seriously and we do have good ideas.

I could see this as being used as a cheap solution for hilly areas, it has its own application and that's great.

There is also the Funitel system with cables on either side above the cabins -- the cabins have arms that form an "H" such that the cables clear the sides of the cabins in steep climbs, and have better handling of winds.

Extreamly useful in hillside slums and favelas. Probably the most useful tool to integrate informal settlements in steep areas into the city.

Thanks for the good points you made in this video. As someone who uses often ski lifts for skiing purposes, I sometimes wondered why they weren't seen in many more numbers, and I think you've answered that question. I just wanted to touch on some points: first, I think one of the main attractions of gondolas is just how nice of a transit it is. Except for wind, and heat/cold if the cabin isn't climate controlled, it's just perfect: no noise, there's always a gondola waiting for you, and, most importantly, and I think which answers the popularity thing: the dang views you get from them. Yes, a metro in London is faster, but it's got nothing on the view of the Thames. And it's not even in a pretty neighbourhood, so imagine if you had one carving its way through Central Park, or between the hills of SF. It just makes your commute such a pleasure. I was wondering though whether one big obstacle for gondolas was air rights. AFAIK, this was one of the reasons for the ballooning costs of the London gondola. Obviously, this isn't an issue in ski resorts, but in crowded cities, it's easy to guess the price of the land and air use for a gondola will not be something to overlook. But I think it will depend on the law of each city. Overall, I think it's very pleasing to see them become more of a common sight. But I think the applications in which gondolas work best are either tourist transport, hill climbing, or access to places in a back and forth way. I don't see them connecting well two transportation poles, but rather being the last step in a transportation journey. Or, if you will, a metro or train line would be the backbone, and gondolas would be the ribs that connect people from those nodes towards their neighbourhood and final destination, be it their home, local water centre, university, or else.

As a kinda "cable-based systems nerd", you're absolutely spot on ! Great video :)

The first city to actually have a gondola system (or teleferico as it's known locally) entirely bisecting it was the central colonial silver city of Zacatecas, Mexico (a UNESCO World Heritage site--the city provided the Spanish Empire with its largest supply of silver for years), rather than Medellin, although it hasn't been a well known fact outside of Mexico. Zacatecas commissioned the Swiss designed cable cars back in the 1970s, to get people near the city center and from the defunct Eden mine (a museum and tourist attraction) up to the city's backdrop La Bufa/Grillo Mountain on the other side, which hosts a museum of the Mexican Revolution, a mausoleum of illustrious historical figures, chapel, and 3 large equestrian statues of revolutionary war heroes, facing a large plaza and gallery of silver/minerals (mining), antique, and souvenir shops. It also offers amazing views of the pink colonial city below. It made it easier to criss cross this city, although it wasn't specifically designed for public transport. It's been upgraded over the decades, recently in the last few years. There's actually videos of the old 1970s iteration and more recent incarnations (note it's never stopped operating, except when it's been upgraded). Just search for "Zacatecas teleferico" on RU-vid search.

Mountain areas in my city would really benefit from this, because not only driving on the main road is scary but also prone to landslides and lots of road work.

I think as said in this video gondolas are at least in developed countries mostly useful for niche-applications like connecting two, not too far away points in a city (like across a river or Inbetween a major destination and a transit stop) or in difficult terrain. But especially in poorer countries I can really see Gondolas shine because they are really cheap, quick to plan and build and not really difficult to build (since most parts are prefabricated by the gondola-manufacturer). Furthermore they are cheap to operate and provide a faster form of transit in often highly congested but still very locally operating cities, which if building a gondola system correctly gives for poorer people the benefits of higher forms transit but really cheap to implement and easy to operate.

The biggest problem I see with gondolas is, that some people have a fear of heights, and that in the end, a traditional metro/LRT would just be better. A lot of these systems get built in places where removing space from streets could make a proper tram/LRT possible, which is even cheaper than a cable car (and easily upgradeable). Also, as shown in this video, cable cars usually don't form long lines, where I can sit down on one end and just stay there until I reach the other, instead I have to change every few stops to get to the next line

Perth, W.A. is even dabbling with the idea of an urban gondola/cable car from Elizabeth Quay in the CBD to Kings Park on top of Mount Eliza (Kaarta Gar-up). This system would be a short walk from the Elizabeth Quay train and bus stations, replacing a trip over the Kwinana Freeway and up the slopes of the hill. However, the plan was conceived pretty much to be a tourist attraction.

We just got one in haifa, IL, It’s go from the central bay station , through the technion university, the haifa university. the top station is at 400m altitude and cuts down the time to get to the universities to 8 minutes and 15 minutes respectively . In comparison to 30/40 minutes from the bottom of the mountain. It’s such an amazing addition to the city and i wish we had more ahahahaha

Quite interesting video! However I want to show my experience I've had in Lyon where they tried to implement a gondola system in western Lyon. However, the project was unanimously rejected by the people living there, and the metropolis had to withdraw the project. To put some more context, western Lyon is on a hill and there's two rivers crossing the city, so a gondola system isn't a bad idea in the first place and some studies have been asked by the mayors of each district to see if a gondola/cable car system was viable. In 2019, there was also a project to build a new underground metro line (for €1.2B) which was widely approved by the population of western Lyon, and the cable car project was put aside due to low projected attendance levels. But 2020 came not only with the Covid, but new mayors and presidents were elected at the head of the metropolis. They didn't want to build the metro line as it was too long and expensive, and resurrected the cable car project, citing much higher attendance levels through new studies (up to 5 times the previous numbers), and a limited budget of around €160M. This line was due to be 7 kilometers long (which would have been one of the longest in the world). This infuriated the districts of western Lyon, who were promised a metro (and mostly didn't vote for the new mayors) and didn't ask for giant pylons in their habitat. Western Lyon is much less densely populated and has multiple parks, housing estates and not many large building blocks. So to put it simply, many inhabitants there have their own yard and they didn't want to have their tranquility ruined by constantly flying gondolas every 30 seconds, surrounded by 50-meter high pylons. They did studies on their own helped by brokers and noticed that the value of their properties could go down by 25 to 30% if they were concerned by a direct fly-over, which wouldn't be covered by "flyover easeway compensation". Also, the mayors proposed multiple routes for this first line, infuriating even more areas. They planned to build stations in parks (as there's quite a bit of room), giving the illusion that this "ecological" mode of transport had to cut hundreds of trees to exist. They felt they didn't know where to go and couldn't get a clear direction for the project. As time passed, they realized they just couldn't go forward with the project and if they continued, they would spend years and years in plea filings, delaying the project further. The opposition was firm and wouldn't give a single square meter of yard to the project. As such, the metropolis had to throw the towel and abandon the project. So pretty much, this is how NIMBYists won here: if you try to make a gondola line, in a sector that didn't vote for you, that was promised an underground metro system beforehand, and has many individual housing structures, you WILL have a bad time. Even if people living here weren't directly concerned by a flyover, they just didn't want giant pylons in their landscape, reminding them of high-voltage power lines. The metropolitan mayors clearly didn't know how to present the project (they didn't even bring visuals for the public to imagine how it could look like!) and did it in the area that had the biggest resistance against them. It was ripe for carnage. Gondolas can be useful but they can only be built with the right conditions. Because gondolas are visually intrusive, and even more so in low-density areas. Also, we can't deny that they don't really make mountains more beautiful. Additional note: there will be a gondola near Paris, not in the city itself. The line will be in Créteil, in southern Paris, at the very end of Metro Line 8.

In Mexico City, gondolas have made a lot of sense in its "cablebus" network, which currently has 2 lines and another in planning, as it crosses marginalized areas with narrow, convoluted streets and several hills, where buses are slow (and with poor service). It also has another network basically the same but with another name: the Mexicable; which has 2 lines and serves areas with the same characteristics. Both have several limitations in terms of their extension both by available resources and by neighborhood opposition, since many people refuse to receive the gondolas because it means "an invasion of their privacy." In Mexico City a wide network is planned to serve the peripheries, many sound like a good plan but some are planning them more as a tourist attraction than as a true mobility solution, as will happen with the next line 3 of the Cablebus.

I've settled on the idea that gondolas are something most suited to the role of 'short branch line' off of more robust, higher capacity transit modes running on the more level terrain adjacent to a topographically difficult to access area.

Hong Kong has one special Gondola route which takes you across the sea and mountain to the Budda--Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car. The whole ride is 49 min as I recall and each gondola could sit 12 people. Very scenic route!

In Wuppertal we have a Suspension railway its have also monument protection its like gondola.

we in bonn inn germany are probably getting a long gondola line (5 stations i think) crossing a hill, dense housing and the rhine river. itl provide valuable connections and redundancy in river crossing, and relieve a stressed bus route

Most gondolas only go 6m/s, so if a bus or tram is possible, that should be used instead. These south american systems are brilliant because they are used in addition to busses and metro in places where the terrain would make those impossible. Like always, the best results are achieved by using smart planning and using the best solution for each problem.

The free gondola in Telluride, CO is genius. It has high ridership among skiers and nonskiers alike, is open year round and has long hours. Not to mention it is free and high tech.

I remember when Exhibition Place had the Alpine Way gondolas. It was taken down due to construction of the now Enercare Cantre. It was to be rebuilt but never happened. Eventually it was scrapped.

A SSS system could possibly also work really well in Hobart in Tasmania which is a very hilly city so it could possibly replace a number of bus routes and be a major link between local bus routes and the CBD! Also Hobart is separated in half by a major river so the system could also go over the river at a high enough altitude for massive ships to pass under! :)

“White eleph- ‘legacy projects” that got me cracked up 😂 Nice humour reece!

For those interested by some details about the specific use case of the first gondola line in Paris : It is being built at the Southeastern terminus of metro line M8 in Créteil. It will continue almost straight South then turn West for its last leg. It will have 5 stations and a length of 4.5km, serving a 20K+ inhabitants area spread over 3 contiguous towns. The first station will obviously be Créteil Pointe du Lac, M8 terminus. Then the line heading South will go over a railyard and some heavy traffic roads and will start to follow the beginning of the LGV Sud-Est high-speed line to Lyon. Then 3 different stations along the partially underground high-speed line and new developments. Then turn West toward the last station in Villeneuve Saint-Georges that will be in a vacant lot next to a school and bordering an avenue. The new gondola is already named Câble C1, following Paris nomenclature (like tram T9, metro M14...) and will of course be fully included into the transit fare system. It will be a lifeline to some very isolated, almost enclaved neighborhoods, separated from the M8 terminus' neighborhood by a long and wide railyard and high voltage lines. The Southbound main portion of the line will fit in the middle of the towns & neighborhoods stuck between RER A's Southeastern branch terminus to the East and RER D Villeneuve Saint-Georges station to the West. This new cable line will offer direct access to the metro, hugely facilitating access to Créteil Soleil shopping mall, the lake, a big university campus, 2 large hospital complexes and the administrative center of the district, drastically reducing travel times and massively increasing frequency. As some of the neighborhoods served by Câble C1 currently only see a bus every 20 to 30 minutes with super long travel time to reach the metro due to frequent traffic jams. The entire line travel time will be 18 minutes but the most traveled section will be between 6 and 12 minutes. The gondola, or télécabine in French (a much more descriptive term) will have fully accessible 10 seat cabins and less than 30 seconds headway, each way. Cabins will all be equipped with CCTV, an information screen and an intercom. Cyclists will be able to take their bike onboard and plenty of parking spots at each station. For more information and visuals, there's the Île de France Mobilités website ("cable1" as subdomain), only in French unfortunately. The project will really use the high and long crossing capabilities of a Gondola to go over and bridge the massive breach / wound that the railyard created in the urban fabric. Other similar projects are being studied in the Greater Paris area to reconnect smaller isolated communities separated by industrial, railyard, highway or natural no man's lands to mass transit and economic, administrative, shopping or service centers. At some point, up to 15 similar projects were researched, now it's reduced to a handful but we can expect to see a C2, a C3 and maybe more in the future. The C1 will be a kind of test to see if the concept is good enough to be duplicated in similar environments. There's also Toulouse's Téléo, a 3S with large cabins that links a cancer research institute and some BRT lines to a subway line by crossing a river and going over a large hill and park. It opened in 2022 and seems to be a success. It has 3 stations and greatly reduces travel times of ground transportation by crossing obstacles.

They seem like a perfect solution for subran cul-de-sacs where most homes are not within walking distance of any main road that you can run a bus down. Put in a gondola down the middle between the houses, and people can get to the suburb's center where you can put in a high capacity train to places people want to be. Since gondolas are slow you can't allow more than a few miles between these town centers, but that is enough cache area to have great higher speed metro systems between them.

My hometown in GA mentioned exploring a gondola system a few years back and were quickly met in Social Media comments with ridicule for the "slow moving overhead shooting targets."

I think the recognition of strengths and drawbacks of gondolas is going on in Paris with the route being chosen being quite tricky to serve otherwise. The Parisian alternative for the gondola would have been more buses or a tramway. But with the route serving a hilly suburb and crossing a rail yard, highway, and high speed rail line, new surface rights-of-way would be quite expensive (long bridges required to cross obstacles). Regarding periodic shutdowns, that isn't bad for something like the Burnaby Mountain Gondola, which will have mostly university student driven demand: just do the closure in the summer when classes are out and replace with a high-frequency bus for the students/staff/faculty still going to small summer classes/events on campus.

My city of Perugia has been historically uphill and has a pretty funky transit line called the MiniMetro, essential a funicular propelled by rubber tires on flat sections. It runs on a single line and cuts to the hitoric center on top of the hill but has always been know for its high maintenance cost and low ridership, meaning it also closes too early for people to use it in the weekend It's definetely cool and crosses into gadgetbahn territory but it would be used more with the right decisions

Huh, interesting video! I came in thinking "Ha, of course not!", then changed my mind to "huh, these things are useful", to finally arrive at "huh, these things can be useful in certain spots".

Put simply YES. The peninsula of Torpoint in neighbouring Kernow is largely detached from the rest of it's city region Plymouth in England. There are floating bridges (ferries) every 15 minutes carrying cars, passengers and an hourly bus service needs something to get passengers across. They can't build bridge as the Royal Navy need to get ships in and out and it's not practical to build a bridge high enough and tunnelling though possible has always been cancelled on cost grounds and the risk of the Ramen Peninsula being overrun with development. Although I still think a light rail tunnel might work similar to the DLR tunnels from North Woolwich - Woolwich/ Island Gardens - Greenwich. A gondola would provide a public transport link and a tourist/visitor attraction for a run down part of the city and the Duchy

The London dangleway, in addition to being slower and less reliable than parallel conventional transit routes, is more expensive. If you have a network day ticket for appropriate zones you have to pay a supplement on top to ride the cable. Note for the equivalent journey on rail transit between nearest stations, a transfer between Jubilee and DLR lines would be required, although that's still usually quicker (and cheaper) than the gondola.

Adding to this, while rare like you said, some gondola systems do turn outside of stations, like the gondola line between EPCOT and Rivera at Disney World. In that case, it appears to be mechanically similar in complexity to a station, but without the platform.

I live in Mexico City and I study on FES Zaragoza, it's quite close to the current gondola system we have. The issue with the campus I attend, is that there are actually two campuses, one of which is on a large avenue so it has a lot of transportation available, but the other one is a bit more hidden and basically the way to reach it is either walking or taking an external bus (but they are quite unsafe). The university provides us with a free bus service that goes to and from each of the campuses, but it's not very efficient, I have to leave at 5 AM to make sure I don't have to wait too long at the line (after 6:30 AM the line gets awfully long). So I feel that a gondola system would be an excellent way to tranport students between both campuses; since they move constantly, you wouldn't have to wait on a line for too long, and it would be great for those who study at night, as the bus flow is not as good as it is in the mornings.

Would love to hear your thoughts on the proposal to build a gondola from the Salt Lake City suburbs to 2 ski resorts in the mountains. It is an incredibly controversial project here and I would like to see the topic of transit to outdoor destinations explored more.

My guy!!! You actually a video to my comment from last month about medellin. Love this discussion.

I quite liked the Telefèric de Montjuïc in Barcelona. It seemed like a good way to connect the summit of a hill/mountain park to a transit system without butchering the landscape. It made me realize that it would be a good idea to build one in Montreal to connect Parc du Mont-Royal to a metro station downtown.

Nice to see you using Istanbul's cable transport as visual examples. On that note, we actualy do have a true urban Gondola system in Ankara! Unlike İstanbul's boutique gondolas Ankara's Gondola has 4 stations and serves a much larger area. Altough it's very enjoyable to ride and pretty convinient, if you asked anyone on the ground they'll be quick to point out how much of a waste of resources it was. Not only is the area well served by buses, the demand to justify cable transport was not existent. Also the last maintinance on the line took almost 2 years and no one complained that it wasn't working during that time... I think that should give you a clear picture.

One reason why I think gondolas are popular is that the system LOOKS like a low-investment option. After all, the thing that you see most of when you look at the system - the pathway - seems to be as cheap as two lengths of cable. If a monorail is cheaper than a train on two rails, then how could a system with zero rails not be the cheapest? Of course, this overlooks that you need pylons at regular intervals. And even if you have a situation where you CAN span large distances between the towers (for example between mountains across a valley), spanning that extra distance will make the cable support more expensive. The component that you see the second most of - the gondolas - are also incredibly simplistic. After all, they are just a plastic box with a steel frame that connects the cabin floor to the support; and the support is just an arm that grabs onto the cable - not even a single actuator needs to be on the gondola itself. Now, with the wisdom that stations commonly are the most expensive part of a transit system is where the disadvantage of Gondolas finally comes into play; because Gondola stations are vastly more complex than for other systems. Not just because all of the propulsion systems (and cabin door controls) are consolidated into them, but also because of the added requirements of cable tensioning (only found in some funiculars), track switching off of the cable onto the slow (dis-)embarking track (found in some forms of local/express rail), its deceleration and acceleration sections (unique to gondola systems), and that the system needs special considerations in order to be able to provide level boarding (also a factor in buses). Also, the low capacity (and the usually comparatively limited number of stops) means that you'll have to build more lines to provide the same level of service to the same number of riders than a tram or bus.

Interesting topic, though not new to me. If you want to see an example of a city that had a network of cable cars already decades ago, you have to check Chiatura in Georgia, a mining town famous for its former network of quite outdated cable cars. Most of the lines closed within the last years and so did also many stations where up to about four lines where connected but some small lines still seem to operate till nowadays. In the city centre, they even built a new gondola system a few years ago which now seems to be operating with four lines and a central station, but compared to the old soviet ones quite boring (but also much much safer due to the European manufacterer). You find a number of videos here on RU-vid, but normally more from an explorer's perspective than from a transit one ;-)

Nice dive into gondolas! I've ridden quite a few as you might imagine including in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and the longest cable car in the world in Zhangjiajie China. I agree with you that most are quite useful and effective transportation. There was even one proposed for downtown Chicago a few years ago. Are there other gadgetbahn gondolas other than the. Emirates Air Line in London? (Oh, and the elevators in Hong Kong are nice because there are shops and restaurants at every stop between escalators. If it were some sort of train, it would bypass all these business which have grown up around the popular escalators.)

Telluride, Colorado has a gondola that is used for skiing during the winter but through the year serves as a public transit route between two parts of the town sitting on separate sides of a mountain.

inb4 LA builds a gondola along the 405 in the Sepulveda section

One thing you forget: Gondolas are FUN. This may sound irrelevant but travel/commute can be soul crushing. A transport system that gives you a lovely view of the area you travel through *is* a bonus. I have that with the ferry system in Amsterdam, also just fun and relaxing in a way a tram or metro will never be. ymmv of course :)

Good to hear that you talk about SFU Gondola. Considering Peak 2 Peak, it still quite stable. That being said, accessibility as you stated will be a concern. Furthermore, don't forget the Squamish Gondola was placed out of service due to someone disgruntled using normal tools. I am not sure if you want to voice your actual opinion regarding that line. I myself see it may have a use, IF they decide to develop Burnaby Mountain/UniverCity more. Maybe. Also, one interesting version is Skyrail Midorizaka Line, which is a combination of monorail and gondola (or a Suspended Monorail pulled by cables). Due to the use of a rail as guide rail, it doesn't sway. Unfortunately due to budget (it was used in a planned suburb - I think it falls to the same purpose as the "dangleway" as a promotion), it was shut down and replaced with electrical bus just last year.

I live in North Burnaby and am VERY excited for that gondola!

I lived in a smaller city in Germany where we had busses with nice, soft seats- and people who would frequently get up for elderly people. Also, the network was not super frequent but very reliable with stops far apart so it was fast to get around with. I’d trade that for anything with unreliable service, any day. Cheers thanks Reese!

Santiago in Chile is also building one. We do have another one but its strictly touristic, as it carries you to the top of the metropolitan park on a big hill. The new teleférico is going to connect the central financial district to a newer business hub at the other side of the mountain. It will also stop at the top of the metropolitan park, but on a new location.

Minute 7:52. I never thought my "homestate" of Vorarlberg, Austria, could be ever seen in a video of yours, but there it is. The beautiful and crowded with to many Germans Ski Resort of Lech-Zürs.

Tourists to a city would love a gondola system since it gets them up high where they can look out and see the city.

Regarding the Emriates Airline dangleway gondola in London, it is made a ourist attraction because of its high fares and (to my knowledge) exclusion from Oyster card fare caps.

These days a delegation from Varanasi (India) visited the Bartholet factory in Flums (Switzerland). Varanasi has ordered an urban gondola system, the first leg will be some 3700 m long and will have a capacity of 3000 passenger per hour. Bartholet is part of the HTI/Leitner group of companies which together with the Doppelmayr group dominates this market. Bartholet actually builds in Flims an advanced gondola system, called "Rope Taxi". One enters the gondola and chooses to which terminal one wants to go. If this works out, it will make urban networks of gondola lines possible, without the need to change gondolas inbetween. What makes me wonder: urban gondolas seem to use extreme masts hights - 50 m and more. In the alps, they must not be higher then 15 m, in order to make evacuation easy and to keep the gondolas out of high winds. @RMTransit: Nice CE 6/8 model you have! Best fright train locomotive ever ..

I feel like while a system made entirely of gondolas is a stretch, wider applications as a solution to first/last mile connections for certain areas could be immense.

We still have gondola system here in Bogota south districts and a new one is planned for serving our very hilly neighborhoods in Eastern downtown. Greetings from Bogotá, Colombia

I think this time the algorithm suggested me a good channel. Great video.

I take my bike on the Dangleway. They offer a free service, with your bike, before 9.30am so it's good for cycling to work (especialy as the lifts in the Greenwich and woolwich foot tunnels frequently break down - As I type both tunnels have broken down lifts). Ideally, of course, they'd build a cycling/walking section in the expensive new Silvertown tunnel, that passes undernath the Dangleway - but that would be too forward thinking. Currently Cargo bikes, used for "last mile" transportation are taking off more in London and the lack of river crossings east of Tower Bridge for cycling is a growing problem.

I grew up taking an aerial tramway quite regularly. It was built in a tiny Norwegian village called Rjukan, known for the production of heavy water during ww2 and very little else, but the town lies at the bottom of a steep valley so it gets no sunlight during parts of the year, so they built an aerial tramway to get the factory workers up to the top of the valley, where they could enjoy the sun, go for a walk and maybe even ski.

Gondola's are great, especially as they are resilient to wind, snow, and other bad weather as design.

On the funicular front, my town has one that is powered by waste water. The funiculars have an upper compartment for people and a lower compartment for waste water. At the top of the hill, the lower compartment fills with waste. Then it's released and gravity pulls it down (at the same time pulling up the other funicular). At the bottom of the hill, the waste water is released into the sewer and thus the funicular can be pulled up again. The passengers never represent enough weight to interfere with the system. So the funicular uses no electricity for its operation.

@RMTransit should check out the Teleférico do Alemão in Rio de Janeiro, a system while inspired by Medellin's MetroCable, completed failed to its expectations and nowadays have the risk of structure colapse.

The popularity is not only due to novelty - it's also because it's a way to create transit without having to take any space away from cars. That being said, I think it can be a great puzzle piece for many cities while most areas will have to be served by other solutions.

I rode the Cablebus in CDMX last year and it was pretty wonderful - the only scary thing was relatively unprotected legs just being plonked on suburban roads; having seen how the denizens of the city tend to drive, I was fairly concerned that it was just a matter of time before someone careered into the gondola support in their vehicle.

Gondolas remind me of ferries, in that they make the most sense when the physical layout of the area make surface travel very time consuming. A bus may to have to wind around a hillside to ascend it, or go around a bay. Thus the similarity. And yet in other ways they couldn't be more different. Ferries scale really well when it comes to capacity. A tiny ferry might carry a dozen people, while a Staten Island ferry boat can carry over 5,000. Ferries don't have great headways -- you are going to have to wait at the dock a bit before the thing gets moving. Miss that ferry and it might be a while before the next one. In contrast, gondolas have headways measured in seconds.

Like many particular technologies, I feel like cable cars can be useful but tend to be implemented where they should not. London's Emirates Air Line is the epitome of that. In other places, however, it can be a real gamechanger for areas with a difficult landscape. You should check out how French cities including Brest and Toulouse have made a smart use of cable cars to go over natural obstacles.

I would like to see a Gondola system connecting Manhattan with New Jersey for people that need to cross the Hudson River who are not close to a PATH train.

Prague is planing to build one of these 3 cable heavy gondola between Podbaba, Troja and Bohnice. Goal is to provide better conection in north part of the city with tramway eventualy be build between these destination sometimes in relativly distant future (after tramway from Podbaba to Suchdol and from Kobylisy to Bohnice)

Gondolas are pretty in a city. They look futuristic but don't make you feel small like denser mass transit

I remember in my hometown a few decades ago. There were plans to build a gondola system that connected residents in some of the more mountainous areas with stops at the bottom of the mountain at major public transport hubs. Then a handful of NIMBY's stages a protest, and it was front page news on the biggest city newspaper. As a result, the city council got cold feet and shut the project down. What was even more frustrating. Was that our city's biggest industry was tourism, and getting to the mountains isn't easy.

The case for adding a gondola line from Production Way-University Station to SFU has thankfully paid off, and hopefully soon this dream will become reality for folks commuting to SFU daily. Not only will this bring higher traffic to the campus, but will also improve reliability, especially during the winter when it's more difficult for buses to reach campus.