Does Your City Need a Gondola?

Gondolas are probably a favourite transport mode of transit enthusiasts and regular folk alike, and apart from ski resorts and hilly mountainsides, we're starting to see more of them in our cities. But does your city really need a gondola?

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Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!

Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.

[pablouribe]

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!

[qwxcvgy]

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!

[juandanielcastillogomez]

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

[brennanconway]

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

[Ocato]

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.

[vexorian]

So I live in La Paz. I had to live 2 years through the nightmare of commuting a 1 hour distance before the miteleferico lines that actually help me go from my home to my work were finished. So I have first-hand knowledge of how much of a life changer it was.

My commute changed from having to use cars or "mini buses" to get to work, with awful traffic congestion and actually finding a car/mini bus with a seat was a complex nightmare to commuting between three different lines of miteleferico.

Definitely the best aspect about my office trips is the completely fixed travel time.
Switching between the lines is not as annoying as it sounds, you just need to walk for a bit.
Stations are at walking distance from my home and work, so I'm one of the luckier users. But the other lines have mostly allowed me to avoid using cars for the vast majority of the time.
The gondolas are actually pretty slower. But since they don't have to go through traffic and move in a straight line, they are usually the best choice regardless. Going to El Alto used to be a nightmare trip, but now it's just 40 minutes away. I can browse the web or watch youtube videos while on it.

I think La Paz just happens to be a very specific situation where this is a great form of transportation. The whole city is difficult terrain. Building a subway is not very viable due to ground quality. And we don't have a lot of money, so cost effectiveness is good. Buses were attempted but they get stuck in traffic as well. If up to me, I would get rid of some roads and build rail, but the social aspects are pretty difficult.

We are the highest capital in the world and El Alto is even higher, so winds are very strong, but there are seldom problems with it. There are cases when service has to stop due to the weather, it tends to be a 10 minutes halt.

Regarding maintenance, it's usually done for a week every year, choosing different weeks for each line. It does mean that the capacity is lost during that week. But a specific thing about La Paz is that the school year greatly worsens traffic. So the trick is to have the maintenance breaks when the kids are in vacation, that way the city can survive the loss of capacity. It's still very annoying, though.

Ever since they were built, we have gone through very awful social conflicts that sometimes involved public transport going on strike, sometimes streets getting blocked and in our worst days, entry of fuel to the city getting blocked. These were situations in which cars became nerfed or even completely unavailable. But of course people still needed to work. In those situations Miteleferico's capacity became completely overflown. I had to get used to waiting 30 minutes in line waiting to get to the gondola. But you do what you do.

[juliuspeters]

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.

[JorgeOrpinel]

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.

[skidawg]

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.

[keirapoppins]

One thing I want to mention about the dangleway is the price - £5 for a one-way trip. North Greenwich to Canning Town on the Jubilee line, a trip which is effectively duplicated by the gondola, is £1.80 at peak time, and just £1.60 off peak.

[JamesScantlebury]

12:08 Apparently the Dangleway had just four (yes, four!) regular commuters pre Covid 😂

[Santiago-lbmd]

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!

[SaveMoneySavethePlanet]

I’m looking forward to the gondola LA is building, but not because I think gondola’s a particularly cool or anything. I’m just looking forward to not being stuck in traffic next time I go to a Dodger game!

In reality, I feel like a bus lane system would perform better, but I’m just happy that we’re committing to doing something!

[Fanw]

Thank you Reece for an extremely interesting video. I would agree with almost everything you say. I personally think that aerial cableways are a practical way of serving high lying suburbs. And remember that cableways (unlike buses) are always electrically driven.
Swiss experience is instructive. They have no URBAN aerial cable cars, but many Swiss towns have urban funiculars. Funiculars are less visually intrusive and are not vulnerable to high winds.
Cable cars, usually of the aerial tramway type, do serve some Swiss high lying VILLAGES.
The well-known Swiss resort of Murren is nowadays ONLY accessible by cable car. The resort of Verbier still has road access, but the main way of getting there is now a Télécabine (French word for gondelbahn).
Verbier is in Valais canton, which has for a long time had a number of villages accessible only by cable car. Valais also still has a number of villages where the public transport is by diesel bus up narrow twisting roads. The canton is now considering replacing these bus routes with (electrically driven) cable cars. This is despite the vulnerability of cable cars to high winds, and the very strict maintenance rules imposed by the Swiss ministry of transport. (Note also that the Swiss MoT insists that cable cars are completely rebuilt every 40 years.)
Cable cars across rivers, such as those in London and Cologne, are purely tourist. The drawback of these cross-river lines for ‘ordinary’ passengers going to work, school, shops etc. is that you have to change twice – on both sides of the river. Gothenburg had plans for a cross-river line integrated into its excellent tram and bus system and using the same ticketing system, but those plans have been abandoned.

[Markd]

Very excited for the CDMX video! Going for the first time this year I think and have heard great things about the transit.

[anshul]

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.

[MartinBrenner]

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.

[ernestojoserodriguezgarcia]

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.

[charliekane]

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. 👍😎

[wyqtor]

May I suggest a future discussion of the Jungfrau area in Switzerland, which combines small gondolas, big gondolas, cable cars, conventional railways with rack sections, and the largest rack-railway system in the world in order to carry tourists around?