Passenger lift ski resort in
Lapland,
Finland In some systems the passenger cabins, which can hold between two and fifteen people, are connected to the cable by means of spring–loaded grips. These grips allow the cabin to be detached from the moving cable and slowed in the terminals, to allow passengers to board and disembark. Doors are almost always automatic and controlled by a
lever on the roof or on the undercarriage that is pushed up or down. Cabins are driven through the terminals either by rotating
tires, or by a chain system. To be accelerated to and decelerated from line speed, cabins are driven along by progressively swifter (or slower) rotating tires until they reach line or terminal speed. On older installations, gondolas are accelerated manually by an operator. Gondola lifts can have intermediate stops that allow for uploading and downloading on the lift. Examples of a lift with three stops instead of the standard two are the Village Gondola, the Excalibur Gondolas at
Whistler Blackcomb and the Skyride at
Alton Towers. In other systems the cable is slowed intermittently to allow passengers to disembark and embark the cabins at stations, and to allow people in the cars along the route to take
photographs, such as
Lebanon's
Téléférique which offers an exceptional view to the Mediterranean, the historical Jounieh Bay and the pine forest at the 80% slope which this gondola lift goes over. Such a system is called
pulse cabin and usually several cabins are loaded simultaneously. mountain telecabine in
Tehran Province at 3,800 meters
elevation Open-air gondolas, or cabriolets as commonly called, are fairly uncommon and are quite primitive because they are exposed to the elements. Their cabins are usually hollow cylinders, open from chest height up, with floors and roof covers. They are usually used as village gondolas and for short distances. Examples are at
Mont Tremblant Resort in
Quebec, Canada, and at
Blue Mountain Ski Resort (summer only, in the winter it is converted to a six person high-speed chairlift.) in
Ontario, Canada, The Canyons Resort in Park City, Utah,
Mountain Creek, and the new Village Cabriolet at
Winter Park Resort in Colorado. Open-air gondolas can also come in a style similar to that of pulse gondolas, like the Village Gondola at
Panorama Ski Resort,
British Columbia. The first gondola built in the
United States for a ski resort was at the
Wildcat Mountain Ski Area. It was a two-person gondola built in 1957 and serviced skiers until 1999. The lift was later demolished in 2004. The lift and its cabins were manufactured by a former Italian lift company: Carlevaro-Savio. One of the longest gondola rides in the world,
Gondelbahn Grindelwald-Männlichen, is in the
Bernese Oberland in
Switzerland and connects
Grindelwald with
Männlichen.
Urban transport In recent years, gondola lifts are finding increased usage in urban environments. Cable cars used for urban transit include the
Metrocable in
Medellín,
Colombia and the
TransMiCable in
Bogotá,
Colombia;
Aerovia in
Guayaquil,
Ecuador;
Portland Aerial Tram in
Portland, Oregon, United States;
Roosevelt Island Tramway in New York City, New York, United States;
Metrocable in
Caracas,
Venezuela;
Trolcable in
Mérida, Venezuela; Cable Aéreo in
Manizales, Colombia;
Mi Teleférico in
La Paz,
Bolivia;
Mexicable in the
State of Mexico,
Mexico;
Teleférico de Santo Domingo; Yenimahalle-Şentepe teleferik in
Ankara,
Turkey;
Maçka and
Eyüp Gondolas in
Istanbul; the
London cable car in
London, England;
Nizhny Novgorod Cableway, Russia. The Metrocable systems in Medellin and Caracas are fully integrated with the public transit network which provides passengers the ability to seamlessly transfer to the local metro lines, whereas the network in La Paz, the largest in the world, forms the backbone of the city's public transit system itself.
Disney Skyliner is a gondola-lift service, which opened on September 29, 2019, at
Walt Disney World in central Florida. The system uses multiple lines and has five stations, and it connects Epcot and Disney's Hollywood Studios with one another and with several Disney-owned and -operated resort hotels. In terms of urban gondola systems for the future,
TransLink in
Metro Vancouver has proposed to build a gondola up
Burnaby Mountain to
Simon Fraser University in an announcement in September 2010. The project was sidelined in 2014, but was revived in 2017. A 3.75 km Urban Gondola is under construction in Varanasi, India called the
Kashi ropeway since 2022. It is expected to start operations in 2026. In late 2012, a widespread aerial gondola system was proposed for
Austin, Texas, in an effort to expand mass transit options in the rapidly growing city. The proposal was rejected by the local transit agency in 2017. A proposed gondola system in
Montreal was ultimately rejected by the
Old Port of Montreal.
Ropeway conveyor A
ropeway conveyor or
material ropeway is essentially a subtype of gondola lift, from which containers for goods rather than passenger cars are suspended. Ropeway conveyors are typically found around large
mining concerns, and can be of considerable length. The
COMILOG Cableway, which ran from
Moanda in
Gabon to
Mbinda in the
Republic of the Congo, was over in length. The
Kristineberg-Boliden ropeway in
Sweden had a length of . In
Eritrea, the
Italians built the
Asmara-Massawa Cableway in 1936, which was long. The
Manizales - Mariquita Cableway (1922) in
Colombia was 73 km long. Conveyors can be powered by a wide variety of forms of power sources:
electric motors,
internal combustion engines,
steam engines, or
gravity. Gravity is particularly common in mountainous mining concerns, and directly employed; the weight of loaded down-going containers pulling the returning empties back up the slope. Gravity can also be used indirectly, where running water is available; a
waterwheel is powered by gravity acting on water, and is used to power the cable.
Bicable and tricable gondola lifts Conventional systems where a single cable provides both support and propulsion of the cabins are often called monocable gondola lifts. Gondola lifts which feature one stationary cable (known as the 'support' rope), and one haul rope are known as bicable gondola lifts, while lifts that feature two support ropes and one haul rope are known as tricable gondola lifts. Famous examples of bicable gondola lifts include the
Ngong Ping 360 in
Hong Kong, the
Singapore Cable Car, and the
Sulphur Mountain Gondola in
Banff, Canada. This system has the advantage that the stationary cable's strength and properties can be tailored to each span, which reduces costs. They differ from
aerial tramways, as these consist only of one or two usually larger cabins moving back and forth, rather than circulating. Bicable and tricable systems provide greater lateral stability compared with monocable systems, allowing the system to operate in higher cross-winds. == List of accidents ==