J Magazine Winter 2017

S
t. Louis has the arch.
Seattle has the space needle.
Jacksonville’s icon involves
an orange roof at the dilapidated
Landing.
Yet Downtown Jacksonville
looks great from the air. The St.
Johns River sparkles in the Florida
sunshine. You can get that
view from the River Club in
the Wells Fargo building,
in a helicopter or from a
blimp.
What Jacksonville needs
is a way for both residents
and visitors to get this
view on a regular basis.
Not with a helicopter or
a blimp but with aerial
gondolas, the kind most
often seen on mountainsides.
But you don’t need a ski
lift to justify an aerial gondola
in a city. They are becoming
the hot topic for urban
planners worldwide.
Urban gondola systems are used in cities
like La Paz, Bolivia; Caracas, Venezuela,
and Cali, Colombia.
There are many other proposals, most
of which have not moved beyond the idea
stage. A few examples include one at the
New York State Fairgrounds; across the
Hudson River in Albany, N.Y.; around the
Lake Erie lakefront in Cleveland; along
the Lake Michigan waterfront in Chicago
and crossing the Potomac River from the
Georgetown neighborhood in Washington,
D.C., to Rosslyn, Va.
The reason for the popularity of aerial
gondolas? By taking to the air, the cost and
difficulties of rights-of-way on the ground
are avoided.
Also, the number of units on gondolas
can be easily adjusted for the number of
passengers expected.
The two best-known urban gondola
systems in America are in Portland, Ore.,
SPOKANE, WASH.
and New York City.
The Portland aerial tram was needed to
connect the city to a medical center on a
mountainside. There are only two-lane
WINTER 2017-18 | J MAGAZINE 51