Most excellent. Clearly, gondolas make a lot of sense in heavily populated urban areas currently choked with car and bus. NYC is a prime candidate and then list of the recent subway addition is mind boggling. New Yorkers have been happily riding the tram over the east river for years, hard to believe new trams wouldn’t be met with the same acceptance. While we all live high speed lifts, for lifts serving six hundred vert or less high speed lifts make no sense. Two minutes to the top instead of eight: BFD! Who cares! You rightly address the additional cost factor of high speed lifts and the need to keep skiing affordable for those who can’t afford The Yellowstone Club. Those old snails crawl up minimal vertical just fine. The bump I call home has lift repurposed from removing Noah’s Ark from the mountain top. The lifts are slow, reliable and reach the summit (summit is in inapt descriptor) in about eight minutes. The season tickets are priced family friendly - two day list price tickets at Vail buys a season. If you’re a codger, even less. So, three cheers for the small areas that provide skiing for so many at an affordable price.
One of your greatest non-ski lines: "where were these NIMBYs when we were punching interstate highways through city centers in the 1950s?"
Most excellent. Clearly, gondolas make a lot of sense in heavily populated urban areas currently choked with car and bus. NYC is a prime candidate and then list of the recent subway addition is mind boggling. New Yorkers have been happily riding the tram over the east river for years, hard to believe new trams wouldn’t be met with the same acceptance. While we all live high speed lifts, for lifts serving six hundred vert or less high speed lifts make no sense. Two minutes to the top instead of eight: BFD! Who cares! You rightly address the additional cost factor of high speed lifts and the need to keep skiing affordable for those who can’t afford The Yellowstone Club. Those old snails crawl up minimal vertical just fine. The bump I call home has lift repurposed from removing Noah’s Ark from the mountain top. The lifts are slow, reliable and reach the summit (summit is in inapt descriptor) in about eight minutes. The season tickets are priced family friendly - two day list price tickets at Vail buys a season. If you’re a codger, even less. So, three cheers for the small areas that provide skiing for so many at an affordable price.