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Hercules Aerial Tram/Mobility Study & Report
Prepared by Reconnecting America
Table of Contents
IV. POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS IN URBAN ENVIRONMENTS: ADVANTAGES AND
VI. CONSTRUCTION: WHAT PARTS MAKE UP THIS TECHNOLOGY, AND WHO ARE THE
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I. Report Summary:
This study seeks to inform City of Hercules Council and Staff about connecting theCity’s waterfront to a new developing town center. This study gives technicalinformation on the possibility of using aerial ropeways (which includes aerial trams andgondolas) and discusses alternatives such as buses and streetcars.Aerial ropeways have been transporting people for over half a millennia, however theirimplementation in urban areas in the United States is rare. This is because they are oftenused as a niche transport application. Reserved for routes that can not be traversed onland, aerial ropeways serve to connect two points with a straight line. There are threeaerial ropeways used as mass transit in the United States today: Roosevelt Island Tram inNew York City; Aerial Tram in Portland, Oregon; and the Telluride, Colorado Gondola.In each instance aerial ropeways fly over a natural obstacle including rivers and steepslopes. Three case studies outline these transportation facilities and discuss the reasonsfor their construction.Also discussed is the possibility of creating a circulator system using buses and streetcars.Buses can be inexpensive and easily implemented on existing streets. They haveadvantages such as flexibility but disadvantages like their image. Streetcars have theability to attract new passengers and development while possibly operating in their ownright-of-way but have larger capital costs and construction times. These two optionscould connect a number of places being created by the City of Hercules and allowcitizens to get to destinations without using their own vehicles.
Technology Overview Preface
Below is a technology overview of aerial ropeways. Aerial ropeway is the term used bythe industry to describe the use of wire rope to transport material and people. Thisincludes aerial trams, gondolas, chair lifts, and funicular technologies, which are all partof the same transportation family.
II. Ropeways in the United States
The first ropeways in the United States were for transporting materials when mining inthe West was in a boom. The technology was officially introduced in 1868 when abicable ropeway was constructed by an engineer named Cypher. Materials tramways hadbeen used to transport work men to high mining encampments, but singulartransportation of people was not introduced until just before the turn of thecentury.
In 1893 a 16-passenger carrier reversible ropeway was used to transport personnel onlyacross the Tennessee River in Knoxville. Passenger ropeways in the United States suchas the Niagara Falls Tramway (built in 1912) and the Sunrise Peak Gondola, built in
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Dwyer, Charles. Aerial Tramways in the United States – An Historical Overview. OITAF 1988
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1907, won international recognition for their designs. The Niagara Falls Tramway is stilloperating, while the Sunrise Peak Gondola ceased operation in 1911 after transportingover 2,000 passengers.
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During the years between the two world wars tramway design continued unchanged untilthe mid thirties. This lull continued until Cannon Mountain in New Hampshire built itsfirst double reversible tramway in 1938 for skiers and tourists. The number of ropewayapplications for skiers exploded in the 1930s and 1940s however costs for large cabintramways were a deterrent for lots of ski mountains. This led to the development of continuous loop chairlifts developed for this express purpose. The first such installationtook a materials tramway and used makeshift chairs to build a ski lift in Crested Butte,Colorado. Major investment and innovations after the war in aerial ropeways led to thefirst fixed-grip double-chair continuous ropeway in 1946. From then on, alpine skiingincreased in popularity and the number of lifts in the United States increaseddramatically.
Even though ski lifts were cheaper, people still preferred the enclosed cabin of aerialtrams. This was not cheap and limited carrying capacity. A compromise was made in1957 with the construction of the United States’ first detachable gondola system.Individual cabins circulating on the rope allowed skiers to travel up the mountainenclosed from the elements and without their skis on their feet.
The first urban mass transport application of aerial tramways in the United States wascompleted in 1976 on Roosevelt Island in New York City. In 1984 New Orleans built anAerial Tram over the Mississippi River for the Louisiana World Exposition. TheMississippi Aerial River Transit (MART) has since been torn down but other studieswere done to see if aerial tramways would be feasible in Cincinnati, Detroit, and DenverThe Detroit and Cincinnati plans were shelved due to lack of interest and funding, whileoperating costs for the Denver gondola were so high at over $10 million dollars per yearthat it was removed as analternative.
Studies by researchers at the West Virginia University (WVU) on why ropeways are notincluded as an alternative transit mode have concluded that engineers are generally notfamiliar with ropeway technology and specifications. Engineers tend to exclude aerialropeways as an alternative even though there may be advantages in certain applications.While the ski industry is very proficient in understanding the different ropewaytechnologies available, transit planners and engineers are often not so enlightened. Theauthors of the WVU study believe this is why until recently only one aerial tram has beenused for urban masstransit.
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Ibid
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Ibid
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Ibid
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Bondada, Murthy and Neumann, Edward.
Potential Applications of Aerial Tramway and GondolaSystems for Urban Passenger Transportation
. West Virginia University, Morgantown 1987.
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Ibid
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