Cable Cars

Blue aerial gondolas over colorful Mexico City neighborhood.

Mexico City Cable Cars Soar Above Gridlock

The Cablebús system transports more than 100,000 people each day and dramatically reduces commute times in the Mexican capital.

August 25, 2025 - Yucatan Magazine

View of colorful dense buildings in Mexico City from aerial cable car.

Mexico City Aerial ‘Cablebus’ Provides Key Connection to Peripheral Neighborhoods

Unlike many aerial gondolas, Mexico City’s Cablebus is largely used by commuters and residents from communities farther from the city center.

October 14, 2024 - Bloomberg CityLab

Germany

How Global Cities Are Working to Electrify Transit

With the transportation sector accounting for a third of urban carbon emissions, cities around the world are seeking new ways to electrify their transit fleets and reduce fossil fuel consumption.

October 18, 2021 - The New York Times

Maokong Sky Gondola

When Other Transit Modes Won't Do, There's Always Sky Gondolas

One Toronto-area man is hoping that cable cars in the sky will one day complete the metro's transit system, but transportation experts see limited use for the technology.

February 29, 2016 - Hamilton Spectator

How San Francisco Integrates Historic Rail Lines into its Transit System

San Francisco has managed to operate and integrate historic rail transit into its overall public transit system. Clement Lau explains how the City does it.

August 20, 2014 - UrbDeZine

The Grotao Community Center

Interdisciplinarity and the Equitable City

On Urban-Think Tank, a design firm working at the intersection of architecture and urbanism to further environmental justice.

April 28, 2014 - Anna Bergren Miller

SF Cable Cars

Thanks to SF's Cable Cars, Bell Tolls for City's Public Transit

They're a global icon of the City by the Bay and one of San Francisco's premier tourist attractions. Operating at a loss, the city's cable cars are also draining resources from more essential forms of public transit, writes Joe Eskenazi.

April 25, 2013 - SF Weekly

'Modern' Cable Car Coming to Oakland in 2014

BART's Oakland Airport Connector will not look at all like the familiar cable car found across the Bay, but will be propelled by a moving cable similar to the Clay Street Hill RR in S.F. almost 140 years ago. The 3-mile ride to OAK will be 8 minutes.

January 3, 2013 - San Francisco Chronicle

The Piranesian Fantasyland That Runs S.F.'s Mobile Monument

Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley tour the "otherwise nondescript brick building" on San Francisco's Mason Street that houses the machines running the "Endless Wire Ropeway" that hums beneath the city's streets and pulls its famous cable cars.

November 28, 2012 - The Atlantic

A Cable Car Comeback

Sophie Landrin looks at the global rise in the use of cable cars - the kind you find on a ski lift and not on the streets of San Francisco - as a transportation alternative. Several French cities are developing plans to become "wired".

November 9, 2012 - The Guardian

When Funicular Isn't Just A Funny Word

Jarrett Walker rides on the Wellington Cable Car, giving him the opportunity to explain the four conditions for when a funicular is a sensible transit solution.

October 3, 2011 - Human Transit

S.F.'s Market Street Railway Celebrates Sesquicentennial

Carl Nolte, the San Francisco Chronicle's historian, writes on the 150-year anniversary of the Market St. Railway that began operation as a 2-car steam train on July 4, 1860, and the evolution of rail on/under Market St including BART & Muni Metro.

July 12, 2010 - The San Francisco Chronicle

Cable Cars Could Link London's 2012 Olympics Venues

Officials in London have announced a plan to link the city's 2012 Olympics venues through a system of cable cars.

July 6, 2010 - Guardian

The Underappreciated Cable Car

When people talk about cable cars, they picture San Francisco's quaint trolleys. But cable-propelled transit (CPT) is a viable transportation option in the 21st century, argues Steven Dale.

February 27, 2010 - New Geography

REVIEW: My Kind of Transit: Rethinking Public Transportation in America

Far from a boring treatise on the need for public transit, My Kind of Transit is an appeal on behalf of the emotional factors that make most transit repulsive and a select few forms enjoyable and uplifting.

October 5, 2009 - Tim Halbur

FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?

After describing his path towards focusing on walkability as the essence of good planning, Jeff Speck marches through his five principal reasons for making more walkable places.

Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold

The course focuses on the opportunities and imperatives that shape reinvention of mall sites.

Professor of Urban Planning

Harvard University Graduate School of Design

Transportation Planner I

KFH Group Inc.

Director, Strategy and Research

Greater Baltimore Committee

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100 Most Influential Urbanists

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Urban Planning Creators You Should Know

A short list of voices on social, video, and podcasting platforms.