The Ropeway Day Planner

Plan a day on funiculars, cable cars and gondolas: your queue in minutes, a join-by time for the last car down, the pass and the fast-track priced against what you will use, and a log of every line you ride

Our capacity calculator turns car spacing and line speed into riders per hour. That fits a gondola, where cabins keep coming, and not a funicular or an aerial tram, where two cars shuttle and a car leaves only once per ride plus the stop at the platform. Our ride-time calculator has the number that fixes this, and neither turns an hourly figure into the thing a visitor needs: how long your own queue is, and when to head for the last car down. This planner joins them. A worked 1,200 m funicular with a 3-minute dwell sends a car every 7 minutes and moves 942 riders an hour, not the 1,650 the capacity calculator gives it; 400 people ahead is departure 4, up to 28 minutes. With a 17:30 last car down and 600 people ahead at closing, the plan says join the down queue by 16:18. A $15.00 fast-track that saves 21 minutes costs $42.86 for each hour back, and a $89.00 pass costs $4.50 more than the two returns it replaces. All figures are examples; time your own line. Every figure is computed from the site's own ascent time, capacity and gradient calculators; worked numbers are examples and rules of thumb are called so. It is a visitor's planner and sizes or designs nothing. While writing it we fixed our cable sag calculator, which understated support tension, and our funicular calculator, which showed a braking load as a negative pull. Included: 24 printable pages with a trip plan card, a queue and last-car sheet, a ticket sheet and a ride log, plus a personalised sheet worked from the numbers you enter in our tools.

Look inside

Two full pages from the pack, exactly as printed. Click either to read it at full size before you decide.

What is in it

• The Shuttle or Loop Rule: the time between departures for a funicular or aerial tram and for a gondola, and why the capacity calculator overstates a shuttle
• The Carload Rule: people ahead into the departure you board and the longest wait, counted in carloads on the day
• The Last Car Rule: a join-by and leave-by time planned back from the last car down, checked against the seats still to come
• The Rides You Will Take Rule: a pass priced against the singles and returns you would buy anyway
• The Minutes Rule: a fast-track surcharge priced per hour back, decided at the gate
• The Percent Is Not Degrees Rule: reading a station plaque in percent, degrees and 1 in X
• The Stopwatch Rule: time one ride and one dwell, and redo the plan with your own interval
• Four working pages: a trip plan card, a queue and last-car sheet, a ticket sheet and a ride log
• A reference table of waits by carloads ahead and time between departures, shuttles and loops at a glance, and a quickstart
• A personalised sheet worked from the line, gondola and grade numbers you enter in our tools

The pack picks up where the free cable car capacity calculator leaves off. The calculator gives a gondola's riders per hour; the pack works out the time between departures for funiculars and aerial trams too, turns the queue in front of you into minutes, plans the day back from the last car down, and prices the pass and the fast-track against what you will really use. Time a ride with the free ascent time calculator, and read a station plaque with the gradient calculator. A visitor's planner: nothing in it sizes or designs a cable system.