Rush hour traffic has gotten so insufferable that some Canadian cities are taking transit inspiration from ski resorts.
What happened: Cities across Canada, including Burnaby, B.C., Red Deer, Alberta, and Oshawa, Ontario, are looking to build gondola systems that feed into their public transit networks.
- Burnaby’s planned cable car would link Vancouver’s SkyTrain to Simon Fraser University’s campus on Burnaby Mountain, making ~25,000 trips every weekday.
Catch-up: Gondolas have already caught on internationally. La Paz, Bolivia’s cable car system, can move up to 34,000 people an hour, while Portland’s aerial tram serves 9,000 riders daily. Cities like Toulouse and Paris are also using them as part of their public transit systems.
Why it matters: Many Canadian cities are struggling with patchy public transit and bumper-to-bumper traffic. Advocates argue that gondolas are cheaper and quicker to build than subways or above-ground trains, and can help get cars off the road.
- For a city like Toronto — which has the third-worst traffic congestion in the world — gondolas could help commuters get quickly to transit hubs like GO stations without having to drive.
Bottom line: Cable cars are in no way a complete solution to congestion, but they do offer a new way to get people from point A to point B without putting more vehicles on the road. Plus, they look like a lot more fun than a commuter bus, if we’re being honest.—LA