KCK is pursuing a gondola system to connect their city and KCMO. SOM's remderings came out today.
An aerial lift could cost about half as much per mile to build than the Kansas City streetcar, $25 million vs $50 million, Gunnar said. Gondola cabins range in size from 15 passengers to 35-40 passengers and a line could carry between 3,000 and 5,000 people per hour.
Interesting idea! Don't know how strictly practical it is, given it goes to an underdeveloped part of KCK, through a largely industrial area, and then ends at the western part of downtown KCMO, but we'll see.
Garrett wrote: Fri Nov 12, 2021 4:32 pm
Interesting idea! Don't know how strictly practical it is, given it goes to an underdeveloped part of KCK, through a largely industrial area, and then ends at the western part of downtown KCMO, but we'll see.
Definitely seems more touristy, but maybe there is a decent flow of people across state lines to justify the project.
Garrett wrote: Fri Nov 12, 2021 4:32 pm
Interesting idea! Don't know how strictly practical it is, given it goes to an underdeveloped part of KCK, through a largely industrial area, and then ends at the western part of downtown KCMO, but we'll see.
Definitely seems more touristy, but maybe there is a decent flow of people across state lines to justify the project.
I'm mostly with Garrett here. Unless the intention is to foster transit oriented development in KCK wherein KCK is more of a point of origin than a destination, then I'd say this is not a bad idea given that it provides a somewhat direct link to downtown KCMO. Although it should really take you as close to Main Street and the street car stop there as possible or at least somewhere more central than a park on the fringe of downtown. I can only think of one city that uses aerial trams as transit - Mexico City and their cleverly named Mexicable - but it seems to work decently there.
But if the idea is for this to be a tourist attraction and there isn't a complementary and robust plan to increase the draw to downtown KCK, I don't think ridership is going to warrant the price tag on a project like this. I would think it's more likely riders don't actually disembark in KCK but just keep riding back to where they started. And they'll make the journey once and probably never again.
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Brad wrote: Fri Nov 12, 2021 2:57 pm
That's cool! What are the odds it actually happens?
This project is early on but I think it has legs with infrastructure funding. There was $1 billion set aside for reconnecting projects like this one.
This will take you from downtown KCK to downtown KCMO. WestBottoms is getting really busy on the weekends and residential development is building down there so those stops make alot of sense. The east stop makes a little less sense to me, convention center would be preferred I think. Convention Center is walking distance to thousands of jobs and has a transit hub.
Traditional transit would carry people from the KCK terminus to the gondola, gondola to jobs in KCMO.
TitosBuritoBarn wrote: Fri Nov 12, 2021 5:19 pm I can only think of one city that uses aerial trams as transit - Mexico City and their cleverly named Mexicable - but it seems to work decently there.
Medillian was the first city to use it, to connect some of the slums in the mountains to the center city. They actually had to build a short line for tourists in the actual city because tourists were using the original lines and ending up in some rather sketchy locales.
TitosBuritoBarn wrote: Fri Nov 12, 2021 5:19 pm
I can only think of one city that uses aerial trams as transit - Mexico City and their cleverly named Mexicable - but it seems to work decently there.
Definitely many more places than Mexico City use cable cars as transit.
