Jared Ficklin and Michael McDaniel are co-creators of The Wire, a brand and concept for urban gondolas in what Forbes calls America’s next big boom town. Designers by trade, they began speaking about their vision to tech conferences and business groups in 2012, leading to a TED Talk in early 2013. If the lifts in Zillertal, Austria can move up to seven million people a day, they asked, why haven’t gondolas entered the transportation picture in our densest landscapes? The presentation was enthusiastically received and Jared gave it a second time at TEDx Kansas City in 2013 to a crowd of more than 4,000. Three years later, Jared and the team at argodesign are at work on a plan for Austin’s first line, Wire One. This week, Jared graciously answered my questions about the project and what comes next.
Peter: How did your background as a designer shape your vision for urban cable in Austin?
Jared: First it gave me access to amazing people like Michael McDaniel and the whole group of other designers that worked on the original Wire Vision for Austin at frog design. It also gives me more designers here at argodesign that are working on the current vision for the first pilot line in Austin, Wire One. It takes a group of designers to come up with something like The Wire, there has been many who contributed, they are all awesome.
Product design is my specialty and really good product design figures out how a technology seamlessly improves the lives of those using it. By contrast, often it seems modern transportation planning begins with a technology looking for a place to be, followed by hoping users will make use of it. As product designers, we came to urban cable from an experiential point of view arrived at using the tools of Design Research & Experience Based Design. After talking to users (people driving around the city) we saw that urban cable is a technology that matches closely the transportation experience Austinites and others in the U.S. are looking to have. Most importantly, urban cable with its unique fitment into the second story and ability to span obstacles can achieve routes people actually want to use. It does this without displacing routes they currently use. We call this principle of doubling the carrying capacity of a route Additive Supply. Culturally, urban cable also offers the personal space and quiet environment people said they would be comfortable in while allowing them to maintain their habits of transportation on demand (also known as not wanting to follow schedules.) By starting with the experience the rider is looking for, we hope to drive adoption and avoid unrealistic costs per rider that ultimately burden the community. I believe the most expensive form of mass transit you can build is the one that nobody uses.
Being a designer has given me a chance to work professionally on feasibility studies in partnership with Engineering Specialties Group and others. The experience of studying system feasibility have greatly clarified the current vision for The Wire. This will sound like a plug, but I mean it as advice to those undertaking this design and engineering challenge. Combining the skills of design research & product design with the traditional skills of architecture and engineering is a great mix for designing systems. That mix can bring to bear a full arsenal of knowledge allowing one to really study routing, ridership, cost & experience in very detailed fashion. Anyone doing any kind of transportation feasibility should seek out design researchers and really talk to users from a product standpoint. The end results of system deployments will improve.
Peter: Cities in South America, Europe and Asia have urban cable operating today. Which example globally is most similar to The Wire proposal?
Jared: Medellín, Caracas or La Paz. All are purpose-built as mass transit to connect neighborhoods with the city center. They leverage the ability to utilize eminent domain in the least intrusive manner to gain the most benefit per dollar on routes that have a meaningful impact. They considered cultural impact in their design yielding adoption and ridership. These are all things we have envisioned The Wire to have in Austin.
Peter: Austin is hot. What has been the experience with air conditioning on London’s Emirates Air Line and elsewhere?
Jared: It is not robust enough for the Austin climate, both as a matter of safety or cultural preference. Any system in North America, especially in the South or Southwest will require systems making up a thermal difference many times the BTU’s the London system can do for much longer periods. Luckily this is simply a matter of engineering. Likely an oversize hanger so the extra capacity can be used for an energy source and the type of industrial climate control one would require here – not unlike what you need for a city bus. Such a gondola car will be more expensive than what we are used to in the current deployments in climates and/or cultures that don’t place such a premium on climate control. But it is not merely a luxury for North America.
I will rather emphatically state no transit system in most of North America could be successful without robust climate control and I am not aware of any major urban cable proposal on the table for the U.S. that is considering deploying without it. We have worked with engineers on this climate control issue and don’t feel it is anything more than a cost factor. Not much more can be said than that. I feel everyone is required to be a little too cagey about it really. I think the manufacturers would do all of North America a favor if they would just go ahead and show a few North American concept cars that featured technology, style, size & climate control that the North American market requires. But I also understand they are quite busy servicing a lot of existing demand.
Peter: Have you had initial discussions with manufacturers? I noticed your renderings show mostly Leitner-Poma/Sigma ropeway technology.
Jared: You clearly know your systems. We have had early discussion with both manufacturers. We also have both of the press packages and kits from both manufacturers dating back to the original Wire vision. Some of our renderings also feature stock photography and just have whatever brand in them that works for the composition.
Peter: You plan to start with a central circulator called Wire One. What is the current status of the project and where do you go from here?
Jared: The Wire One vision will be released soon. That is a vision for what we at argodesign feel is the right pilot line for Austin. We have put quite a bit of study into it, and there are a lot of advisers that have also contributed to the vision. It will be a great step into a feasibility study. The Wire & urban cable is being discussed with the right folks in the community and government. The progress could be faster. More attention could be given. But we are happy the conversations continue.
There is a really good group of people that understand the technology and are working on the first steps. But bringing transit to a city is and should be a measured process. Austin is a very innovative city, we have a pressing need in our traffic crisis, but the need to apply study and care is no different here than any other city. My hope is Wire One in Austin could be the first in North America. I think we will need to speed things up faster than they are working now for that to be the case.
Austin really has the perfect mix of geography, infrastructure, innovation & culture that would make this a very successful match. Austin needs The Wire; it would enable us to keep some key neighborhoods in their quiet/walk-able/family friendly form, build and maintain our festival-based tourism, meaningfully impact affordable housing and offer an achievable alternative to automotive congestion.
Thanks again to Jared for answering my questions with such depth and enthusiasm. Wire Austin is just one of the urban gondola proposals gaining momentum in the United States and I continue to believe it’s only a matter of time before one takes off. Stay tuned for Wire Austin’s upcoming vision to be released in the next few months along with the formal study on Georgetown-Rosslyn in DC. These are exciting times!
Lift Blog 
Thanks for your work in regards to this article Peter. I assume why we haven’t seen systems like this is two part. 1) Bureaucracy which is so rampant in this country that they a strong union can shut down a project like this in the design phase because it has the potential to put city bus drivers out of a job. 2) Previous forms of public transportation in this country with the exception of Telluride’s system have all been failures either due to lack or ridership or the expenses have outweighed the benefit when the studies were originally drafted. I know there was a lot of criticism about the OHSU tram here in Oregon since its haul rope lasted only half its expected life span than was forecasted and its things like this that opponents put out in the spotlight about why this was a BAD IDEA! I always thought urban gondolas would be a great idea and why they were limited to only ski resorts, but all the previous urban gondolas in North America have been removed after only two years. Therefore, the concept must not be logical to do.
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The Portland and Roosevelt Island trams are operated privately but it doesn’t have to be that way. Gondola employees could be part of the local transit union if that became a political issue. Mi Teleferico employs 352 people to operate and maintain the three gondolas in La Paz.
Portland is doing 6,000+ rides per day and going through haul ropes in part because they are running more trips than anticipated. Not a bad problem to have!
I wouldn’t consider MART true public transit as it was built for the world’s fair. The systems Jared talked about would be purpose-built for public transportation and integrated with other modes.
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In Austin the plan would be to re-deploy the drivers from the displaced route into feeder routes to create even more transit routes. This is Additive Supply at work. We gain supply by using Urban Cable as a backbone circulator, we gain supply by not running the busses under that route opening up surface street capacity. We gain supply by running more frequent busses on the east/west routes that can feed the backbone. We gain supply tying into a new PRT system for University of Texas. That adds up to a very meaningful difference for the entire south side of the city. Then we go North. Then we go East. Then we go West.
We also intend to use full time station attendants. While we do not know yet if those would be City Employees we would not be disappointed if they were. Station Attendants are an excellent employment opportunity and they become the ‘doormen’ of the city interfacing directly with people moving about.
If we were to deploy what we are planning, I think we will have a very good cost per rider even at real North American System costs. Mostly because of the route. It is all about the route, as it should be. What makes this Urban Cable more than anything is we can capture the route with that technology and the only other technology that comes close is subway. We can’t afford subway and have the aquifer to think about. In the meantime we can continue a lot of growth utilizing an urban cable line for a fraction of even the cost of putting surface rail on this route or even adding a new lane of traffic for that matter.
Stay Tuned
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Peter, thanks for the interview. Interesting project!
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Great interview Peter. I have family in Austin and I think it would do wonders in that city. I hope this dream becomes a reality and would love to be involved down the road as like you ropeways are a huge part of my life.
Thanks for your great blog!!!
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Jared – How big of an impact in your considerations is the ability to bisect with minimal environmental impact from both the installation as well as the operations perspective, our many protected barriers such as the Barton Greenspace/recharge zones, the Balcones Canyonlands, the “lake barrier” running through the city, Zilker, etc. for the tourism effect as well as the “straight-line” path benefit for feeder lines ? Also, can the cable support towers be artistic or multi-functional? Could we get rid of cell towers and place the cell antennas atop cable towers? Can they be made to resemble our famed and illustrious moontowers? Could they be “works of art” in Ladybird Lake?
Thanks.
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There’s a reason why this technology has not been adopted. It’s not practical or cost effective for an urban area like ours. We need a surface light rail system that carries far more riders at far less unit cost over time, with far less risk. It’s mystifying why you don’t hang this up and support a light rail system instead. As demand grows it can even be undergrounded (subway) as is happening in downtown Dallas now. Oh wait, I get it: you’re a designer, not a transportation engineer with years of experience working with/on real-world transit planning and development. Get real, dude!
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David, your statement is wrong in many ways. Do you have *any* cognitive association with the actual costings for ANY kind of rail vs. Installed ropeways around the world? Austinites have demonstrated by ballot exactly how interested they are NOT in costly right-of-way acquisition and infrastructure. Wire One is fractional in cost of installation as well as time-to-transporting, in maintenence, and risk to the taxpayer.
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