CableRider
The Journal
Percent, Degrees, and Slope Length: Converting a Ropeway's Grade Correctly
Percent grade and angle in degrees don't just look different — they drift further apart the steeper a line gets, and neither one tells you the actual rope length a line needs. Here's the full conversion, worked across a real range of grades.
Ascent Time and Line Speed: How Fast Should a Ropeway Actually Run?
Ride time looks like the simplest calculation in ropeway engineering — distance over speed. It is, but the choice of speed itself is a genuine trade-off between throughput, comfort, and diminishing returns, worked out here with real numbers.
The Main Types of Ropeways, and What Each One Is Actually For
Aerial tramway, gondola, chairlift, funicular, cable-hauled street railway — five genuinely different machines that all get loosely called "cable cars." Here's what actually distinguishes each one, and an illustrative side-by-side of how their capacity compares.