The answer to easing car traffic in the greater Dallas area could come from above.
The master-planned Legacy business area of Plano, Texas, has more than 800 businesses and corporate campuses with a daytime weekday population of 160,000 people, said Brian Shewski, Plano’s transportation manager. “The density is absolutely there for having some [additional] type of transit,” he said.
Enter the aerial tramway.
In 2023, the Regional Transportation Council for North Texas invited cities to apply for gondolas that operate on aerial tramways to help move people in congested areas. Plano was the first city to apply. Gondola developer Swyft Cities is now in discussions with Plano, Dallas and other cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area about locations and timeline, according to a company representative.
Shewski said Plano received a federal grant to study the viability of aerial transit compared with other transportation options. The study is scheduled to get underway in mid-2024, he added.
Other countries have long turned to aerial tramways or cable cars as a transit option. The world's largest network of urban transit aerial cable cars is in La Paz, Bolivia. Mexico City is currently building the third line of its gondola system. City officials hope tests of the line will begin in May, with an opening date announced after that. Toulouse, France, opened its own line in 2022. In the U.S., aerial cable cars are mainly the domain of ski resorts and tourists. Portland, Oregon’s aerial tram, which opened in 2007, is one of the nation’s few aerial tramways that is part of a public transportation system.
Over the past years, aerial tramway system proposals have come and gone in several U.S. cities, yet they never fully faded from the urban transit conversation. Cities are turning to private companies, or those companies are approaching cities, to discuss building aerial transit. As municipalities aim to relieve traffic and reduce transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions, some are taking another look at this transit mode. New technology that allows aerial cable cars to handle more complicated turns also makes aerial gondolas a more realistic option for some communities, Shewski said.
“I have no doubt that this is going to happen somewhere in the country. Dallas might be the first one that gets it done,” Shewski said about the current generation of aerial trams. “This is a technology that's definitely viable.”
Finding the right fit
Aerial trams are best suited for complex topography, said Alfredo Mucarsel Manciati, a civil engineer who has worked in cable car systems for more than a decade. Aerial cable cars can traverse areas that feature mountains and bodies of water.
Manciati is co-founder of Metroferico, a company building a 13.5-mile cable car system in hilly Quito, Ecuador. He said he is also in talks with government officials in Miami, Boston, Chicago and New York City about building aerial cable car systems there.
Cable cars aren’t always the right transit option for a community, Manciati said. They are designed for distances of up to 6 to 12 miles. They travel more slowly than other transit, under 18.5 mph. The usefulness of an aerial cable car system also depends on multimodal connections, he said.
In Plano, the proposed gondola route would connect to Dallas Area Rapid Transit, Shewski said, which offers light rail, commuter rail, bus, on-demand and paratransit services across 700 square miles.
Connections to existing transit are also a consideration in Los Angeles. A nonprofit called Zero Emissions Transit is the project sponsor for a proposed aerial rapid transit line that would travel from the city’s Union Station train station, a transit hub for Southern California, to Dodger Stadium in Elysian Park. The stadium station would be the first transit within the park, said David Grannis, executive director of Zero Emissions Transit.
Former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt devised the aerial tramway project, which would be financed and built by his son’s company.
Grannis said an aerial tram system in Los Angeles could be a proof of concept for other cities. Its capacity would be 10,000 to 12,000 people per hour.
The gondola system would differ from the one in La Paz, Grannis said. “LA is relatively flat. You would not just cover everything with gondolas,” he said. “But where you've got geographic challenges or geologic challenges — rivers, mountains, hills, grade changes — where buses don't really make sense or don't have the capacity, gondolas do.”
Public backlash
Like lots of public infrastructure projects, aerial tramways frequently face public opposition in the U.S.
Plano’s proposed system, for example, poses right-of-way issues and the challenge of getting public buy-in, Shewski said. “It's a moot point if we put out a transit system and we don't have a station in some of the corporate campuses because … they don't want a station,” he said. “If we're not going to have supporters of the system, does it make sense for us to move forward with it?”
In Los Angeles, some local residents formed a “Stop the Gondola” movement to oppose the project. They are concerned that it will ruin views, fly too low near stations and encourage drivers to park in neighborhoods near gondola stations.
Los Angeles Metro has issued the final environmental impact report for the tramway, with all costs covered by Zero Emissions Transit, according to an email from Metro. The Metro board was expected to certify the report at a meeting on Jan. 25, but a city councilmember, whose district includes Dodger Stadium, introduced a motion to pause the board vote for more traffic studies based on community concerns.
In Utah, an 8-mile aerial tramway is planned to transport skiers from a suburb of Salt Lake City to resorts in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Unlike other recreational gondolas, this one will be funded and built by the Utah Department of Transportation. A group called Gondola Works, which includes the ski resorts that would benefit from the gondola, promoted the project.
Locals opposed to the project say they worry about potential watershed damage, the taxpayer burden it could create and an approval process influenced by special interests. Three lawsuits, including one by the Salt Lake City and nearby Sandy City governments, have been filed against UDOT over its approval of the project.
Many gondola projects are supported or proposed by commercial entities. For example, in London, Emirates airline sponsored an aerial cable car line for 10 years from the Royal Docks across the Thames River to the borough of Greenwich; it’s now sponsored by technology firm IFS Cloud.
Manciati said his company got involved in Quito’s gondola project because the city didn’t have the necessary funds. If Metroferico finances the project, it will get a concession for 30 to 40 years to operate the system.
He added that public authorities rarely have experience in building aerial cable cars, so they delegate to companies such as his.
Grannis said it’s only a matter of time until another gondola is built in the U.S.
“People tend to see this more as a recreational kind of whim,” he said. “It hasn't been a viable option before because people have not really experienced it and don't understand how it could integrate with the public transit network.”
