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A Subway in the Sky - A Tahoe Truckee Regional Mass Transit Alternative
Imagine that one day, rather than driving into town, parking, and then making the return trip - that you could instead wait a few minutes in a comfortable station, board a gondola (color-coded for your destination), and then get whisked into town or to a local ski resort, park, or school. Imagine too that instead of fighting congested, icy streets that you had the luxury of reading a paper, using your tablet or cell phone, or playing with your kids as you are delivered safely to your destination.
Imagine that one day, rather than driving into town, parking, and then making the return trip - that you could instead wait a few minutes in a comfortable station, board a gondola (color-coded for your destination), and then get whisked into town or to a local ski resort, park, or school. Imagine too that instead of fighting congested, icy streets that you had the luxury of reading a paper, using your tablet or cell phone, or playing with your kids as you are delivered safely to your destination.
The solution advocated in this proposal is to create a region-wide transportation system using 3-cable detachable aerial trams. The system would, for the most part, use “off-the-shelf” technologies to avoid costly development efforts. The tram system would use 6-8 passenger gondolas to transport people (and their baggage and sports gear) between the residential neighborhoods, commercial districts, schools, and resorts and recreation facilities. A series of stations would be the hubs of the system to distribute riders to the area’s far flung neighborhoods and recreational areas.
Even though the proposed system is an aerial tramway, the concept is based on the idea of a “subway in the sky” - an integrated, regional system of safe, reliable, timely, personal transportation. The aerial tramway system proposed here is one approach to solving the long-term transportation needs of locals and visitors in a way that reduces reliance on automobiles and imported fossil fuel. Unlike creating a surface based light rail or bus system, there are advantages to running the gondola lines above ground.
These advantages include:
lower right of way costs,
reduced land footprint and impact,
less snow removal and maintenance costs, and
more point-to-point access in an area that is really a set of towns, ski resorts, and service areas that are laid out as the spokes of a wheel.
The main station and terminal stations would tie into existing pedestrian walkways and surface transportation systems (cars, buses, trains, and cars).
The main station would serve as the interchange between the various main lines, connector lines and major trunk lines. The routes and gondolas would be color coded allowing riders to easily determine which one to board for any destination.
This web site will provide details about the cost estimates, links to downloadable versions of proposal documents and related information, energy and environmental considerations,information about other tramway systems, route descriptions, and station designs.
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