Palm Beach Skyway FAQs

1. Do cable cars and gondolas, as Aerial Cable Transit (ACT), make sense for public transportation systems?

Due to lack of familiarity, ACT has been a transportation technology that’s outside of the box for many urban planners and transit professionals. Of course, like any transit mode, there are applications and places where cable cars make sense and places where they don’t have applicability. This aerial transit technology is gradually gaining traction, but it does not automatically mean that ACT should replace a city’s entire existing and future rapid transit network with cable cars. Transit professionals should familiarize themselves with the technology to make informed technical and budgetary decisions for each contemplated application with a choice of transit mode mix.

2. Is Aerial Cable Transit safe?

ACT is one of the world’s safest forms of public transportation. Statistically speaking, the chances of a person experiencing a serious injury or fatality while riding a cable car is much less than while riding all modes of surface or guideway transit. On top of an impressive worldwide operation record, the industry engineers each system to a high degree of safety, which is mandated by very strict passenger tramway standards in almost every country. Cable cars are designed with multiple system redundancies and egress options.

For example, in the United States, there has not been a single gondola related fatality at a ski area since 1974; and there have been no fatalities anywhere in the world on aerial cable transit gondolas. When an accident does occur, keep in mind the following rule-of-thumb: “the degree of media coverage of a given transit technology’s failure cause is inversely related to the chance of that failure’s occurrence”.

3. I’ve seen cable cars at ski resorts; are they useful in urban environments?

A good thing to remember is that there is no traffic 50 feet in the air; ACT removes interaction of transit vehicles with pedestrians, cars, buses and trucks. While cableways are typically used in topographically constrained areas like ski resorts, they also have the ability to capitalize on flat surface terrains. If you look around, you’ll notice that city traffic may be the ultimate urban topographical challenge.

4. How many people can ACT move per hour?

ACT technology is constantly improving and evolving. Existing systems in Portland, Orlando, Medellin, La Paz, Mexico City and other cities worldwide are designed to carry up to 4,000 pph per direction. ACT now has the technological ability to design systems for public transport up to 8,000 pph per direction using multiple cables and larger cabins. The already operating systems in La Paz and Mexico City have the capacity to each transport over 50 million passengers annually.

5. Aren’t cable cars relatively slow for transit?

When comparing speeds, it is important to not compare maximum speeds, rather we must compare average speeds. For example, streetcars and buses are built to travel upwards of 50 mph, however, due to factors such as headway wait times, traffic congestion, boarding times, intersection lengths, signal timings, etc., their average speed is often much, much slower. For example, streetcars and busses average approximately 12 mph in most metropolitan areas. While ACT systems cannot compete with dedicated ROW system like subways and light rail speeds, existing urban cable lifts have average operating speeds of 12 to 15 mph.

6. Can cable cars operate in bad weather and storms?

This question comes up surprisingly often for a technology that is commonly associated with mountains, snow and high winds. Skiing gondolas are built in some of the world’s harshest and most unforgiving winter climates. Conversely, most urban gondolas are constructed on flat terrain in mild climate areas, but these urban environments are still subject to extreme storms such as high wind, thunderstorms, and hurricanes. Generally, when other forms of public transit are limited or shut down by extreme weather events, ACT will shut down temporarily and remove its cabins from the line into storage facilities for protection of the cabins.

7. What happens if a cable car malfunctions mid-ride?

All ACT urban systems are built with three independent drives: 1) Primary, 2) Auxiliary, and 3) Evacuation. Additionally, each one of these drive systems has several levels of equipment and controls’ redundancy incorporated into the design of the system. Along the cable guideway, the towers and sheave rollers have redundant safety switches and redundant fiberoptic communication cables to limit the number of possible malfunctions. In the extremely rare event of a complete lift system failure, emergency procedures are in place with trained crews and local emergency departments assisting in the safe and orderly evacuation of all passengers.

8. When was aerial cable transit invented? Where are cable cars operating for public transit?

Modern cable technology has been around for 100 years, with the first passenger gondola arriving in the 1930s. The cable technology remained on mountains for many years, only recently making its mark on the urban market. A lack of information, or at least accurate information, available over the years has severely limited the ACT technology as a transit alternative.

Cable was first seen in U.S. cities in the form of rail cable cars (think San Francisco and Pittsburg) but was quickly made obsolete by electrically powered streetcars. Only in the last 20 years has urban transportation flourished in the form of aerial cableways. Since the very first ACT lines in New York City and Medellín, Colombia, the number of metropolitan cable systems has increased rapidly to over fifty urban ACT systems operating around the world transporting collectively over 250 million passengers annually.

9. Who makes ACT cable car systems?

The world’s largest manufacturers are Doppelmayr in Austria, Leitner-Poma in Italy, and MND-Bartholet in France and Switzerland.

10. How long does it take to install an ACT system?

Small ACT systems with few stations can be constructed in 12 months; larger, more complicated systems can take 18 to 24 months to construct. Also, a large contributor to engineering and installation time is the particular municipality’s approvals and permitting processes and timelines.

11. Are ACT systems expensive?

Similar to other public transit technology modes, the true construction costs of an ACT system are dependent on numerous factors such as local considerations and the type of technology. Generally, an ACT system’s cost is very competitive and can be built at a fraction of the cost of other guideway rapid transit technology modes. Due to the reduced civil works of the guideway, ACT systems generally come in at a cost of 30% to 50% less than comparable elevated light rail and automated people movers.