Pie in the sky? Add gondolas to Austin’s list of potential traffic solutions

[Geee]

Watchdog.org:

It seems appropriate in Mayor Steve Adler’s curiously named Year of Mobility that an aerial gondola system that has been kicking around for four years would make a big comeback.

 

The same designers who couldn’t get an audience with Austin transportation officials in 2012 on Wednesday charmed members of the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority with the outline of a pilot program that would cost taxpayers anywhere between $300 million and $600 million.

 

Mike Heiligenstein, the Authority’s executive director, is asking his board at its Sept. 28 meeting to consider hiring the Texas A&M Transportation Institute to study the proposal.

 

“I think it’s a fabulous idea,” board member Charles Heimsath told the Austin Monitor. “I think it’s interesting and certainly worth exploring.”

 

Short of firing commuters out of cannons or moving them around in cars deployed by internationally respected ridesharing companies, area transit experts have been open to a wide range of ambitious traffic congestion solution