Month: January 2012

The Future of Transit: Gondolas

- Adam Clare

The Gondola Project is all about bringing fast and cheap public transit to cities by using (what else?) gondolas! Some people may think that gondolas are only for ski resorts or tourists but there’s a lot of growing interest around the world in using gondolas as an alternative to light rail and to get public transit to place it otherwise can’t get to.

There are many advantages of using gondolas from the small footprint (you can run them down the medians of highways) to their ability to cover vertical distance easily. Even the very flat city of London has a suspended cable car system under construction!

Here’s a video called “Aerial Ropeway Transit: Exploring its Potential for Makkah”:

U of T Research Contributing to Makkah’s Transportation Development from Colin Anderson on Vimeo.

The Toronto Star recently ran an article on exploring gondolas in Toronto and how other cities are exploring the idea.

A gondola doesn’t offer the same capacity as a subway but it could move 5,000 to 6,000 passengers an hour, “which is good compared to a streetcar line,” said Shalaby.

The Queen streetcar line carries about 1,800 people per hour at its busiest point in the morning peak, according to the TTC. That’s compared with about 30,000 on the Yonge subway, 2,100 on the Spadina streetcar and 200 to 300 on a neighbourhood bus route.

Meantime, Vancouver is releasing a business case in January for a gondola that would transport commuters up Burnaby Mountain to Simon Fraser University and a nearby residential development.

“Because it’s on top of a mountain, it gets snow before ground level. Right now we serve the university with very large articulated buses that have to go up and down that hill. There are 10 to 15 days a year they can’t make it to campus because road conditions are so poor,” said Ken Hardie, spokesman for TransLink.

Read the rest of the article.

Want Good Grades? Go Run Around!

- Adam Clare

There is strong evidence that physical activity and good grades at school are directly connected. It’s a good idea to let kids go outside and just run around!

“The findings of one high-quality intervention study and one high-quality observational study suggest that being more physically active is positively related to improved academic performance in children,” the authors write.

The article suggests several reasons for such a link:

  • Exercise improves blood and oxygen flow to the brain, improving cognition.
  • Exercise boosts levels of endorphins and norepinephrine, decreasing stress and improving mood.
  • Exercise helps to create new nerve cells and supports synaptic plasticity.

Read a bit more at the CBC.

‘Electric Highway’ Infrastructure Goes Live

- Adam Clare

The first location in what will be a series of fast-charging stations for electric and hybrid vehicles as officially opened in Washington State. Consumers cite concerns over how far electric vehicles can drive before char gins as a reason they won’t by electric cars (even though this is a none issue for the vast majority of commuters). With more stations where people can quickly charge their autos this distance issue will go away.

AeroVironment plans to install six stations every 64 to 97 kilometers along I-5 in shopping malls, fueling stations and restaurants with easy access to the highway. Three more stations will be built along U.S. Highway 2 to the north and potentially two more along Interstate 90, near Seattle.

2012 will be a pivotal year for electric vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf and plug-in electric hybrids such as the Chevy Volt. General Motors had high hopes for the Volt in its first full year on the market, but the company expects to miss its sales target of 10,000 cars in 2011, coming up short by more than 3,800, according to Bloomberg. Sales were stronger toward the end of the year. The company is expanding its annual production to 60,000 vehicles starting next month, even as the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigates lithium-ion battery-pack fires following tests designed to measure the vehicle’s ability to protect occupants from injury in a side collision. Neither Nissan nor Tesla Motors—both of which sell all-electric vehicles powered entirely by lithium-ion batteries—have reported any fires in either the LEAF or Roadster, respectively.

You can always read more.

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