Off-handed Dismassal of Gondola Transit on Austinist.com

Quote from: http://austinist.com/2013/02/16/austin_and_the_high_speed_rail.php

We’ve even explored the idea of riding gondolas to work everyday or an underground subway system, neither of which are remotely within the realm of possibility.

The link there only is to an article about the impossibility of a subway system.Therefore, the author at the Austinist gives no reason for the supposed impossibility.

See earlier posts for more coverage of this topic.

It’s not like it hasn’t been done before; take a look at the better bits of this Guardian article from November: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/06/cable-cars-transport-solutions-france

Just before this summer’s Olympics, London launched the Emirates Air Line. Its 34 cars bridge the Thames between Greenwich and the Royal Docks, running 90 metres above the ground. Visitors to Barcelona can climb to the top of Montjuic hill in a gondola lift. Its counterpart in Koblenz spans the Rhine then rises to the Ehrenbreitstein fortress. Rio de Janeiro, New York, Portland, Algiers, Oporto, Bolzano: the list of cities equipped with a cable car is growing longer every day.

The most significant experiments were made in the 2000s by Medellin, Colombia, and Caracas, Venezuela. Cable cars, rethought as a means of mass transport, were clean, producing no carbon dioxide emissions directly, and ended the isolation of the poorest neighbourhoods. The concept has been such a success in Medellin that the city council is considering a fourth route.

Cable transport is cost-effective, environmentally friendly, safe and requires little infrastructure. It is particularly suitable for crossing natural obstacles such as rivers or scaling hills, there being no need for expensive engineering work. Over an equivalent distance a cable link costs half as much as a tram line, and though no rival for underground railways in terms of capacity, some models can carry up to 8,000 passengers an hour.

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