Rising Above Gridlock

Gondolas. Yes, gondolas.

Being stuck in traffic is no fun, and even less fun is being told you’re not stuck in traffic, you are the traffic. Yes, yes, I know I’m the traffic, but I just wanted to get to work, it’s very, very cold, people are running faster than the new LRT, and my electric car is all charged up and ready to go. Can you blame me? In the warmer months I’m more than happy to ride a bike, and once the transit lines are faster and more reliable I’m all in. In the meantime? Driving is hard to give up. 74% of Toronto commuters choose to drive while only 20% take transit.

Improving transit reliability, speed, and safety is very important, and will result in more people choosing transit over driving. More transit signal priority, better line management, and funding state of good repair will get us there. And with the Eglinton Crosstown (line 5) finally almost ready to open, even more commuters will live near an (eventually) rapid transit line. The Ontario Line is several years out, but will drive even more transit use, further reducing the quantity of cars clogging up the roads. All good stuff.

That said, even these transit improvements and expansion will not divert enough car trips to eliminate congestion. It will improve, yes, but we need more. One option is to build even more transit lines, but these are very expensive, and getting even more expensive over time. Line 6 cost $2.6B, line 5 is $13B and counting, and the Ontario line is projected at $27B. That’s a lot of billions. Given the state of our municipal budget, and how we should be spending more of that maintaining what we’ve already built (see below), it would be very difficult to fund many more rapid transit lines anytime soon.

While we continue to optimize every last bit of space we have to jam as many cars, busses, LRTs, and bikes through the city, what if we could use the space above the roads? No, not flying cars, although those may be coming too. Gondolas. Yes, gondolas. Stay with me.

Paris just opened Europe’s longest urban gondola in December. Riders coast over the roads for 17 minutes, a trip that takes 40 minutes by bus. 11,000 people are expected to ride it every day, and it’s actually France’s seventh urban gondola, so this seems to be working. This new gondola line cost $138M euros, or about $200M CAD to build. No billions here.

In Medellin, there are 6 gondola lines that carry 220,000 passengers per day. Some of these lines traverse terrain unsuitable for vehicles, and all of them transport people much more quickly than if they took the bus. 2.5-hour commutes have been reduced to minutes. Many of them connect to tram lines where passengers continue their journeys. In La Paz, Bolivia, up to 300,000 people per day ride one of 11 gondola lines. Many trips of over one hour now take 10-15 minutes.

Gondolas are often chosen to replace buses when there are mountains, ravines, or other rough terrain that makes ground transportation more difficult and expensive. But they can be deployed anywhere. Cost-wise, gondolas cost anywhere between $5 and $50M per kilometre depending on the terrain and technology (more on that next), while LRTs are $200M to $700M per kilometre, and subways are $800M to $1B+. For comparison, a typical urban freeway costs $45M to $90M per kilometre. In other words, gondolas are an order of magnitude less expensive to build than rapid transit. The entire Paris gondola system cost roughly 1% of the Ontario Line budget.

I’m not suggesting gondolas can replace rapid transit, or that they should be considered instead of busses in all cases. But given their success in other parts of the world, and with their attractive price point, they could be a viable, innovative solution that makes a lot of sense in some areas.

Where, you might ask? How about the Toronto Islands. While I like a good ferry ride as much as anyone, wouldn’t it be lovely to coast over the lake in a gondola, sipping a beer while watching the islands come into view? They would have to glide high enough to avoid the ships and low enough not to collide with the planes headed to Billy Bishop, but that seems doable.

The Don Valley corridor would also be a great place to build a gondola. Roads and valleys don’t work well together, and cutting through (over) the valley would connect the Danforth to downtown, not to mention the Evergreen Brick Works, a fantastic public space which is currently very difficult to get to unless you’re driving. There are ravines in Scarborough that could also be considered as viable gondola routes.

Traditional gondolas are have fixed points of origin and destination, with some stations in between. But new technology, such as Whoosh (love the name) by Swyft Cities, allows for autonomous pods that travel independently on a network of cables and rails. Instead of running on a fixed route, these gondola pods can make turns, routing themselves to where you want to go. You summon a gondola pod with your phone as you would an Uber, it picks you up at a nearby stations, and takes you to any other station on the line. Now we’re talking.

Let’s not get too distracted by newfangled, futuristic solutions like on-demand, autonomous gondolas. It’s still vital that we invest in not only building transit, but operating it in an efficient, fast, and reliable way. At the same time, outside-the-box solutions like gondolas could be an innovative way to alleviate congestion in specific areas, and elevate our transportation experience in more ways than one.