Mastodawn

Rod Drury's ambitious cable car project has been accepted for the fast-track process by Shane Jones. I thought it was meant to whiz tourists into town, eliminating the need for rental cars? This line suggests otherwise.

"It is expected that the Queenstown Cable car would take up to 3000 passengers an hour each way and be located only 20 minutes’ drive from the airport."

What? The company's map even shows an "Airport Station". How can that be a 20 minute drive from the airport? Who is planning this stuff?

https://archive.ph/HP6KN

#Queenstown #NZ #CableCar

Ref: https://www.queenstowncablecar.com/

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FoxyLad

@BobLefridge Looking at the website, it looks like the airport station would be about five minutes walk from the airport terminal. It also mentions taking 20 mins from the airport to Queenstown stations.

It actually looks pretty cool, and could solve a very real problem (traffic here is shocking, and going to get much worse with fast-track estates everywhere) without turning all our roads into multi-lane monstrosities.

My worry is the economics - what will a ride will cost? The temptation will be to charge what a taxi charges ($75) which will put it well beyond what commuters can afford and only tourists will use it. If they make it $5, it'll be extremely popular and will reduce traffic considerably.

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Bob LeFridge

1d ago

Priced right, a flash gondola system will be an asset to the town. Pricing will determine patronage and hopefully locals' passes will be "affordable" -- whatever that means these days.

Cynical me wonders how much public funding has been factored into the business case?

Speaking of fast-track, at a time when waste is being pumped into the Kawarau River or trucked to Southland, the scale of approved Wakatipu housing developments has reached the silly stage.

As much as I'd like to believe that the cable car will counteract some of the effects of a rapidly increasing population, I fear that infrastructure lagging behind development has become a semi-permanent QT hallmark.

I hope I'm wrong.

@foxylad