>The cabins run without a braking system; if the haulage cable snaps, the cabins will roll straight back down the track cable. This happened to a tramway in Georgia's capital Tbilisi in 1990, killing twenty people.
All in all, a good article that shows a really neat place. A city of tons of tramways, built for an incredible worker efficiency. The pictures are well done and almost make it feel like you're visiting. It was one article that didn't leave me hanging.
Brings to mind the time a US Marine Corps aircraft sliced a ski-lift cable† with its wing at an Italian ski resort, killing 20 people. The airplane was damaged but managed to land safely at Aviano Air Base.
FrogDesign proposed cable gondolas to solve Austin's mass transit problem[1]. With the hills and lakes/rivers in the area, it's a plausible solution (cheaper than a subway, anyway). The only hitch I see is how to air-condition the cars -- I wouldn't want to be in an enclosed glass box on one of our 110F days without it.
Interesting that they compare the cost of roadways to the cost of light rail/subway, but don't mention what the potential cost-per-mile of a gondola system would be.
“In 2008 the hauling rope of this tramway snapped with 12 passengers inside. Ramaz Khipshidze, the director of the Aerial Tramway Network says the automatic braking system worked "thanks to God."”
Well, it certainly wasn’t thanks to regular maintenance. Honestly, why is everything from the Soviet era just left to rot?
Soviet Union had lots of drawbacks, no doubt, but they did a lot of good stuff like rope roads, railroad, undergrounds etc. It's cheaper to maintain the heritage than build something from scratch, why is it neglected?
The present government has to blame the past in order to maintain its authority. Independent if how the USSR did, they have to be shown as 'evil'
(I am not saying USSR was puffy and fluffy)
Yes, obviously. But Google got it from somewhere too. It clearly started with the ADM3A keyboard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Terminal_ADM3A.svg) and spread through use of HJKL in vi, and in a number of games from shortly thereafter (rogue, as mentioned, but also robots) which is actually where I first encountered it, playing games on my parents' unix systems long before I learned vi. It's just fun to note the various plausible memetic vectors.
When reading the title: Stalin's ropes I was expecting something more cruel and dangerous like an article on prisons or tortures or something. What a relief to find out that it's about city transport, though it Is dangerous now as they haven't maintaned it well and the breaks should add the security to those ropes. I doubt if I dared to use them unless wishing for the adrenaline rush.
I love the "In Focus" by The Atlantic. There are always mesmerizing and capture the beauty of the subject being talked about. And also, wow - keyboard navigation! Yes!
If currently produced code would keep on running for 59 years without major incidents (just a new coat of paint every decade or so), that would be amazing.
>The cabins run without a braking system; if the haulage cable snaps, the cabins will roll straight back down the track cable. This happened to a tramway in Georgia's capital Tbilisi in 1990, killing twenty people.
All in all, a good article that shows a really neat place. A city of tons of tramways, built for an incredible worker efficiency. The pictures are well done and almost make it feel like you're visiting. It was one article that didn't leave me hanging.