 Good afternoon. I'm Tim Apachele. I'm your host with Moving Hawaii Forward. And today's show is titled Aerial Mobility, Hawaiian Skies or the Limit. And as the title would suggest, we're going to talk about mobility through the skies. And that's our traditional discussion about rail or bus or bike or walk. This is an innovative topic and I'm very much looking forward to it. With me today I have Nicole Horie and she is actually a board member of Think Tech Hawaii. But she's going to talk about one of her passions and that is Aerial Gondolas. And so, Nicole, thank you very much for coming on the show. Appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. Yes, this is going to be good. So I know you did a lot of research to find out about the Aerial systems that are existing around the world before the show. Yeah, there's a lot out there. There are. And what I'm noticing is that Europe and all over the world, they're using and implementing these systems of mobility and the United States is not so much. Well, there's definitely projects that are being proposed. So I think everyone's excited about the proposal for Austin. There is a proposal for the Georgetown area near the capital where it would be a system with three stations. And that's actually just been approved as well. The feasibility study has been done and it's been shown to be feasible. So that's exciting. Well, in my research, I mean, I was just constantly amazed on some of the advantages of to an Aerial Gondola or I've used the term tramway. But one of the things that I thought was very interesting is that you have consistent travel times. You have a continuous transportation of it. You have smaller capital investments. You have operating costs. And the thing that really caught my mind is they're quick to build. Yes. Yes. So tell me a little bit more about that. So generally they say the construction time is between 18 to 24 months. But there is a system that just went in Berlin. They're having a flower show and there's a large park outside of Berlin where they just installed a monocable gondola. They started constructing it. I think the first tower was being put up in March last year. And then by September they're already doing test runs. So it's pretty amazing. That is amazing. They're planning to bring that on service for the 2017 show. So just over a year. That is unbelievably fast. It is. When I think gondola, obviously, I have a stereotypical image of my brain because when I go skiing, I'm usually in a gondola. But it's far beyond that. I mean, it's much larger. In fact, these gondolas sometimes go hold how many people? Well, 35 passengers. 35 passengers. Yeah. So you only have seating for either 20 or 24 passengers, depending on the design. I'm sorry, 24 or 28 passengers. So if it's full, actually 80% of the passengers would be seated, which is a big advantage. And then if you have a smaller system, you could do 10 passengers. But for what we're proposing here in Honolulu, we would go with the 35 passenger car. That would be unbelievably great. I understand it can move so many people per hour. Do you know what that number is? I've seen different numbers on that. Depending on what settings you choose, it could be 5,000 to 6,000 for the maximum capacity of the system. But if they don't expect demand to be that high, a lot of cities will just have the cars coming less often. So you might space them 90 seconds apart instead, and you have a much lower ridership capacity. But as long as it meets your needs, it's still a system that can be very practical for the local residents. And is there a distance? Is there a maximum distance that these things can be implemented in? So I think one of the longest systems that's being proposed right now is actually something that the city of Branson, Missouri, just signed a memorandum of understanding with some developers for. And that would be, I believe, 9 kilometers. 9 miles? Well, 9 kilometers. Oh, sorry. We get to go up. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so that is a very long system. And then it would have multiple stops. And it's more oriented towards tourists. Right. But there's other ones such as the peak to peak at Whistler that have enormous spans. It's possible to have a distance between two towers that's about 3 kilometers. Do you need to have it from an upper elevation that goes down to a lower elevation, or can you have it as a constant elevation? So if we're looking for where to place the towers for a constant elevation system, we would place smaller towers closer together. They would hold the two travel paths closer together as well, so that we minimize the footprint and the air rights that are required. We don't want to affect the buildings on either side, but it is something that's feasible for an urban environment. Now, a lot of these, obviously, you go on websites and you look at the one, the Matterhorn, it's 12,000 feet up in the air. I mean, that's phenomenal. Yeah. Particularly in the mountains, you have this airstream that's 12,000 miles, or 12,000 feet up in the air. So they hold up the sustained winds then quite well. Yes. The manufacturers say up to 100 kilometers an hour. So even when we have high winds here on Oahu, it's very rarely... So that doesn't pose a problem at all. And how fast do these things move? So the ones we're looking at are 8.5 meters per second, which translates to about 19 miles an hour. And you have to add in time to stop at the station or just slow down at the station for people to get on and off. Right. But it's still a pretty quick system when you compare it with things like the bus or... No, I mean, I've really never thought of this before, and I've been in the transportation business for 17 years. So aerial mobility is the new concept, and I find it quite exciting to research it. So let me ask you this. Is it a point A to point B, or can you have stops in between? Is it really designed for kind of a one-stop method of transportation? Actually, maybe we can go to one of the pictures at this point. Okay, let's take a look at them. There's a route map that I've developed. So basically, looking at where the demand is for people coming off the rail, you'll have a lot of people who are headed either for Waikiki or who are headed for university. So in order to connect those points, in order for us to also serve the convention center in Pucks Alley Area, we can put in stations that are midpoints. And are those relatively low to the ground, or is there a stairwell system that will need to be... So they could be elevated or they could be low to the ground. And there are some pictures later on where you can see the different options that designers have. I know with the transit system or a transit development or rail development, we always have the challenge and it's a good challenge of American Disability Act access. Right. And so I was wondering maybe how that would complicate matters with a system like this. Yeah, so that's actually one of the reasons to get with a larger 35 passenger car system because then it's large enough that you can't have wheelchairs and strollers and bikes, probably not during the two hours of peak travel time, but you could have a way to carry your bike at other times during the day. Oh really? Yeah. Well, I'm familiar with a little bit because I have family in New York and I've been to the Roosevelt Island area and have ridden that tram. And I didn't realize that tram actually started back in the mid-70s, back in 1976. How is that different for that? In fact, that's one of the very few systems in the United States that actually use it for mobility rather than in mountain resorts and things like that nature. So what do you know about the Roosevelt system? Roosevelt Island system, excuse me. That one's a tram. So basically you have the cars trading places and instead of a gondola where you have many cars traveling at once and then them just attaching off the line once they get to the station, you'll actually, I believe, have the trams fixed to the line. So when one car is moving, the other car is moving, but then you can have much higher capacity. So in terms of the number of passengers in a single car, in some cases it's up to 200. I believe the one in Portland has about 75 passengers per car. And you know, sometimes there's a coffee shop inside. Really? Yeah, yeah. Coffee shop. So it's a much bigger technology, but then you also don't have departures as frequent. Oh, I see. So the advantage of gondola for an urban setting is that as soon as you get to the station, you just walk on, you might wait 10 seconds on average to get to the next car, and then you just board, there's no, you're checking a schedule or any of that. Right, you don't need a schedule. So that's where that concept of continuous transportation plays in. There's always a car and it's always continuous. So you're not at a particular time point. There's just always a car ready to go. Yeah. Fascinating. Well, you came here with some photos, so let's take a look at some of those and be interesting to have you walk me through those. Okay, so here is a proposed system for Chicago. You can see how they envision it fitting in with the urban environment. It's relatively low compared to the buildings around it. And it really, for them, would be a great sightseeing opportunity. I'm envisioning it as much more of a commuter thing for Honolulu, but it does look like it would be fun to ride, and their renderings are just gorgeous. There's also a picture here from a new station that's being planned for Toulouse, France. So this is actually the fourth largest city in France, and connecting to a metro stop would be this three-station system. They actually just signed a contract for $57 million to have it constructed. So it is... Did you say $57 million? $57 million. That's nothing. So it's three stations, and then it's going to be three kilometers in total length. It's going to go from a university up to a medical facility, and then there's also a tech park or research park that's the third station. So right now it takes them about 30 minutes to go from one end to the other from the university to the tech park, and with this system they'll be able to do that in 10 minutes. And it's not even running particularly fast. You could speed it up if you wanted to, and I'm plotting on our system being a little faster to go between the stations. I mean, in relative dollar terms, $57 million is a drop in the bucket compared to what numbers we've been running through. It seems quite reasonable. This one is in Berlin. So this is the one I was telling you about that they were constructing a crazy fast speed. It is part of a garden exhibition. So you can see that they used the green roof technology and gorgeous architecture since they are planning on this being a tourist event. I'm actually not sure how much it costs because this is something where the manufacturer is putting it in for three years and they're covering that through a share of the ticket sales for the show, but also as a demonstration project. And then after three years they'll revisit it. I don't know if they'll actually end up keeping the system, but as you'll see with the Koblenz system, which was the site of a Gondola for a previous garden show, the community decided they liked it so much they wanted it to stay. Here's another one that's for a ski area. This is in France, and it's just a good example and a good view of what the station size could be. That's fairly low impact. Not a lot of real estate there. And here is the Koblenz station. So this is actually the station that is the background for us right now. This is just a different view of it. And you can see that there's a tower at the mouth of the station that helps it get up from ground level to the proper cable height. Okay. And how well is that received in the community? Oh, it was received very well. It was supposed to be a temporary installation, just for the Flower Show exhibition, but they decided to keep it around. And it's just a good demonstration of what an urban scale Gondola could look like. So let me clarify something. That was put in place as a temporary... That's right. And it was that simple to put in as a temporary could be dismantled. Yes. So the idea with the Berlin one in particular is that if the Berlin area decides not to keep it around, they'll just take down the electromechanical portions. They'll take down the cables. They'll take down the cabins. Obviously, you can't take away the buildings. But then they could always install that equipment somewhere else and still a lot of the values retain. So even as a temporary feature, it's reasonable to do. I find this conversation absolutely amazing. One, because of price. Two, because of speed in which to build it. Three, if the community doesn't like it, it could be dismantled. I mean... That's true. That's true. Oh, you're just blowing me away here. So there's going to be more to look at here. So we're going to take a quick break. I'm Tim Apachella. This is Moving Hawaii Forward. I'm here with Nicole Horie. And we'll be right back. Thank you very much. Hawaii covers stories that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Elise Anderson. And I'm Kaui Lucas. For our show next time, we're doing a think tech special. Home Alone and Homeless Alone at Christmas. We want to learn more about the isolated, disconnected people alone in our community. Lots to come on think tech. Tune in 10.30 p.m. this Sunday. See you then. Welcome back. Thank you. I'm Tim Apachella, host for Moving Hawaii Forward. Today's topic is aerial mobility. Hawaiian skies are the limit. And I'm here with Nicole Horie. And she's discussing aerial gondolas and tramways. Thanks again, Nicole. Thank you. Well, thanks for coming back. It was a quick break. It's a pleasure to be here. Yes. It was a quick break. So let's take a look at these pictures. Let's continue on because I find them fascinating. I really do. So this is where we are on our picture here. So this is a picture of the interior of that Koblence car. And you can see it's a much more public transportation oriented design than some of the other ski area designs. But the station, the cars themselves actually have a lot of variance. So because this was a demonstration system, they were able to show multiple versions and, you know, just experiment a little bit. Well, the design is sleek and looks nice. Now, if we were going to get really fancy, it would be lovely to have one like Chicago's proposing. They're actually proposing custom, you know, glassed-in cabins. They look absolutely phenomenal. But, you know, it would increase the cost. Right. So you have trade-offs there. There are some really nice options that are just available off the shelf. If we look at the next picture, this is the Symphony Cabin, which is partly designed by Pininfarina. This is a famous designer from Italy. He does the Ferraris? Yes. Does he not? Okay. So... Got a Ferrari in the air? Yes. And the interior views of that are also just really luxurious. Here's another one. So this is the plan system for Toulouse and what the cabins would look like for that. So just to give people an idea of what that experience would be like, we're expecting, you know, 35 passenger cars coming through the station about once every 20 seconds. So you can easily transition from the rail to getting on to Alamoana, and then you go to your final destination. So I... And what kind of total cost are we... Okay, so that alignments about how many miles? Less than eight? Oh, okay. So actually to go with that design would be about 2.6 total miles. Okay. So... Yeah. So it's not a long distance, but actually the cost is in the stations. So depending on how fancy the stations are, if we have, you know, a lovely green roof and, you know, phenomenal curves, it could be absolutely gorgeous, but it could be really expensive. We do think it's going to be something that could be quite iconic. So you don't want to skimp on the design, but you also want something that, you know, fits in with the rest of the transit infrastructure that fits in with the rail stations that, you know, is very open air and, you know, very place appropriate. So I am looking at the rail system design for some ideas. So let's talk about Hawaii and these sort of systems. What kind of reception are you receiving for them? Oh, everyone's excited about it. You know, we do have... Excitement is good? You do have some people who mentioned that some people are afraid of heights, which is true. I don't expect necessarily everyone to want to ride it, but I think people in general are looking forward to benefiting from lower street-level traffic and less congestion. Yes, ma'am. You also have, you know, a quiet system. So even if you're not riding it, it's not going to be something that interferes with your enjoyment of, you know, your neighborhood. There will be the potential for, you know, tinting as it goes past people's windows if it's in an area with towers. So hopefully you can enjoy the view where there is a view and then not be looking into people's windows as you go past apartment buildings. That's an interesting point. I didn't really think about that, but now you've raised it, and so... Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, people are, you know, mentioning the winds. So that is something where you would have to, you know, consider the possibility of slowing down. Portland does slow down their system when they have high winds. But if we look at the 3S system, which has the three cables, it's much more stable, and that's what enables it to operate even up to 100... Is that the Leichner or Leichner system? So Leitner-Poma does the system, and then Dopamirah does the system. So, you know, there's a lot of similarities between the two, and you just have to see, you know, how the things came in. You mentioned Portland. Do you know how long there's been an operation and how many people are they carrying? I know they've carried over 10 million passengers. Really? Yes. So, I believe there has a kind of challenging configuration because it's on a steep hillside and it's, you know, fitted in with the hospital complex at the top. So I know that wasn't trivial for them to build. But... Was it a government works project or is it kind of a partnership, a private government partnership? So I believe some of the funding came from the hospital complex. Right, okay. Because they wanted to increase mobility up to OEQ. Okay. Interesting. And do you know when they installed that system? I think it might have been 2008. Oh, okay. I think you should quote me on that. Oh, that's okay. I'm not going to hold you anything here yet. Okay, so tell me about what kind of reception you're getting from Hawaii Department of Transportation on this concept. Well, I don't know that I've specifically spoken with... You know, I have spoken to various civic leaders. So, you know, they've expressed interest and they do have some good questions for me. I mean, this might be an opportune time and we don't know where funding is going to go as far as our light rail project. We don't know if it's going to really end at Middle Street and that's going to be the end of the day. We don't know if it's going to have increased... It's going to increase funding to get us to Alamoana. We just don't know. And I would think this would be an opportune time for folks, you specifically, to introduce this idea as an alternative and a viable alternative. And I don't know... You're probably a one-person lobbying effort, I'm sure, but maybe you need some help. Certainly the success of the Honolulu Aerial depends on the success of the rail. And I think having the Honolulu Aerial in place to deliver passengers to the university and to Waikiki, where they really want to go, is really something that will help the rail and increase the ridership. And then just you make the entire system more cost-effective. It's one thing that you can see with every successful system is that usually every aerial system is connected to a metro or underground line. The one in Brazil, there's an underground station, right where the first station starts. There's a couple in Paris, the Toulouse one, and then one being planned to connect to the metro. So having that additional ridership and just using the aerial to expand the reach of that system is really important. So this is an integrated multimodal concept that can work. That's right. And it can work here in Honolulu. It can. It can. And it's something that currently I'm planning to do on a private basis. I think that just makes things simpler and still looking at potential federal sources of funding and things like that to support the project. But it's not something that I expect the city to necessarily be on the hook for. And then I am hoping that there would be some operating profits. So the system in Bolivia, Mito e Ferrico, just announced that they had a $3 million profit for the year. They carried 77 million passengers and also came out with a profit. Because even your best transit systems, I'll say bus systems, you're lucky to get 29 cents on the dollar for a fare box recovery. You're lucky at best. Yeah. And most systems only obtain about 4 cents, 5 cents on the fare box. So you're looking at a 95-cent deficit for a lot of transit systems in the country. And you're telling me that there's a system out there that's operating with a profit? Well, with their operating profit. I'm not sure what their investments initially were. But the cost of a system, and going back to the earlier question you had for me, depends very much on the architecture. So if you have a building with retail integrated into it, maybe some office space or community space, and then you have the aerial as just part of that building, it's hard to say how much of the cost of that is the aerial. You can see from some of the station's costs that are even being built here in Hawaii with our hard construction costs. For instance, there's Ho'opili. So Ho'opili is supposed to cost $14 million. And if we look at the picture for that, you can see that you actually get a lot of station for your $14 million. Right, right. Well, don't start off on Ho'opili because I went off last week because there is a planned development of almost 12,000 houses. And we're talking between Ewa and Kapole. And the bottom line is, I just don't know if there's any more room to put more houses so that these people can get on, you know, on the highway and come into downtown. And in my mind, a lot of times, I'm hoping that our transportation systems that we're trying to put in place are not a warrant for developers to say, look, we have this in place. Now give us the permit and we're going to convert our precious agricultural lands into, you know, planned communities. And I'm hoping that these great ideas are not being used as a basis for us to get approval for permits and build more and build more and build more. So that's just a cynical side of me and I'm sorry I introduced it today. But I came up last week with Jay Fidel and it has merit as far as why are we putting more houses on precious ag land? Yeah, well I think it is a different case where you have an urban area that's already primarily built up. I think with the aerial system you will have some different uses of land. I think there will be more people from Waikiki coming out to explore restaurants and shops along the line. But I don't think it will change the character of the neighborhood too much, honestly. What is the harshest criticism you've received? Is it aesthetics? Is it logistics? I think the greatest skepticism is just in terms of cost. Though when you look at, you know, the potential revenues and the impact on the city I think it's easy to make the case for it. So, you know, it is a lot of money to have to raise. Right. Do you see this as a mixed mode of transportation for both the commuter and tourist or commuter and... Yeah, so I think it's most likely that we'll have a... Most of our riders will just come off the rail and have it integrated as part of their rail fare. Then you'll have other people who pay for a ten ride pass and let's say they pay $25 to ride the aerial ten times. You know, for locals who just ride it intermittently it's pretty cost-effective. For tourists who are just going to be riding it once you might sell them like a $6 single ride pass or maybe a $15 day pass. So you'd have to figure out what would make sense. But it's not something that's cost prohibitive. And certainly a lot of the aerial systems that aren't targeted at tourists charge more on the order of $30 or $40. We wouldn't charge that much but we do see ourselves foremost as a commuting tool. Okay. A couple of weeks ago I had... Mark Garrett, he was the transit director from DTS and he's talking about a project that they're working on. It's a smart card technology. But the nice thing about smart card technology is you can integrate the fare structure between rail, bus, and potentially an aerial system. So that would be very nice if this all could come into place. What's the next move? What's the next move to try to see if this thing could be realistically implemented in Honolulu? Well, certainly I think looking at what's going on in Missouri where they have the memorandum of understanding with the city that provides the developers five-year exclusivity on the concept of building an aerial system that enables them to invest in engineering to develop the routing and just make sure that you have the correct locations. The memorandum of understanding assumes that the city will also tell them what the city is looking for. So if the city is planning on having a lot of visitors go to one area or another and they do have a lot of visitors, they have about eight million a year which is on par with Hawaii though, I assume they most only stay for a day. But they're expecting to stop off at multiple tourist locations and then the city can help them figure out which places make the most sense. So they do have stations mapped out theoretically but they're going to be working on their engineering and design now that they have the memorandum of understanding. Fantastic. Well, fingers crossed. Would you come back and give us an update as we hopefully move forward with this? Of course. I'd love to have you here and hear more about it. But we're out of time and as usual I have more questions than I have time today. So I'm going to say that it's the end of 2016 and I'd like to give a special thanks for those that have helped me hobble along with putting the show together and a special thanks to Zuri Bender, Ian Davison, Robert McLean and Nick Sexton. This is Moving Hawaii Forward. I'm Tim Apachella and we'll see you in 2017. Happy New Year.