We may get some local gondola action in the near future.
Look up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s a gondola? Or it will be if the city of Sugar Land can get a federal grant to study bringing in an elevated rail and cable system and then the additional funds to actually build it.
City planners and leaders hope to install a system that would enable residents and visitors to leap over the city’s most congested areas, for example where highways 6 and 59 meet, which happens to hold the record for the most crashes. The system would connect prime locations such as Sugar Land Town Square and Smart Financial Centre. Planners are looking ahead to connecting up with say the Methodist Hospital System and the expansion of the University of Houston Sugar Land campus.
This would be the first such system in the country, according to Sugar Land leaders, and would accompany what they say is a determination to develop innovative approaches to transportation and other services for residents. “We like to be pioneering,” says Melanie Beaman, the city’s transportation and mobility manager.
Over the past three years, the city of Sugar Land has been busy surveying residents and what it discovered is that the No. 1 priority for many of them was an alternative way of getting around town. Besides more walking and biking connections, Beaman says what residents said they wanted were more transit options. What they want is public transit that works.
“Fifty nine percent of residents say it’s difficult to get around with existing public transit. So they basically give what we have now an F.” she says. And while many Texans have a well-known love for automobiles, that doesn’t extend to everyone, she says.
“Just because you drive a vehicle doesn’t mean that everyone else does, Not everyone can afford it. Not everybody can physically do it. Thirty percent of the population doesn’t even have a driver’s license,” Beaman points out.
The city has partnered with a firm called Swyft Cities which initially began planning for elevated transport for Google and its employees. When Google decided not to go forward with the project, the group that had been working on the plan split off and formed its own company: Swyft Cities.
Sugar Land has applied to the Houston Galveston Area Council for federal funding, Beamon estimates the cost of the engineering study at $12 million, pointing out quickly that the cost of adding a freeway lane can run to $300 million “and nobody blinks an eye.”
According to an FAQ on the city’s website, the elevated rail and cable system would not be taxpayer supported, but would depend on partnerships with the private sector as well as, they hope, state and federal funding. The gondolas would be autonomous; no one would be driving them. The idea would be people could go to one of the gondola launch locations and using an app on their phone, pay their fare, jump aboard and go directly to their desired destination with no stops along the way. Most of these gondola stations would be on city-owned property.
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Besides the environmentally friendly aspects of the system which Beaman says tie into the city’s master plan to be “more sustainable, more environmentally friendly,” it would cost considerably less than adding another lane to the highways.
Also, the use of a fixed route bus system doesn’t work well in a suburban city like Sugar Land she says. “They’re big buses. They take up lanes. They move slow. You have to have enough population to sustain a service like that.”
But what the suburbs do have that many more urban centers do not, she says, is plenty of free parking, some of which could be used for the space needed to set up a gondola station. Beaman estimated each station would need the equivalent of about 18 adjacent parking spaces. “They have smaller ones that could fit into tighter areas like for example Sugar Land Town Square where we don’t have a lot of space, but we have plenty of parking spaces. Most of the traveling infrastructure where the cables and rails are is city-owned property.”
“We have plenty of parking that is totally underutilized. So our city is looking at how to redevelop these areas, whether you add some restaurants out there, more shopping, aero-gondola stations. There’s all kinds of things you can do with the space that’s more beneficial economically to the city.
“We want to redevelop some of these area like Lake Pointe. Well then, who wants to build a huge $80,000 parking garage when you can have a station there instead and utilize the parking that we already have? Why do we keep building these parking lots and wasting space and making no income for the city. And if people could move around more easily, park once and do all your traveling, eat lunch, meeting your friends, doing whatever, then you go back to your car and you go home.”
See here and here for more on Swyft Cities and their potential projects in North Texas. There’s an info page about this on the City of Sugar Land website. More details from Community Impact.
The engineering study, which began in 2023, is anticipated to finish this year, Sugar Land Communications Director Doug Adolph said in an email. It will assess the feasibility of crossing Hwy. 6 and Hwy. 59—both owned by the Texas Department of Transportation—and moving toward the Smart Financial Centre and Crown Festival Park.
“Most of the system has been planned on city-owned property and TxDOT has been shown the preliminary concept layout. They were very supportive and excited about the project,” Adolph said. “Stakeholders would be involved in the process as would the public who would have the opportunity to provide their input.”
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This is the second autonomous project Sugar Land has considered this year, as city officials are also working with aircraft company Wisk Aero to bring an electric “air taxi service” to the city by 2030, city officials said.
“We will be relentless in looking for opportunities like this one to partner with state and federal funding sources to reduce the financial impact to our residents while also delivering mobility projects that support quality of life, economic development and tourism,” Goodrum said in the release about Swyft Cities.
See here for more on the Wisk Aero project. Gotta say, I’m just a wee bit jealous about how willing Sugar Land is to innovate while we’re over here killing or at least arbitrarily delaying much-needed transit projects. I’m going to mutter under my breath while shaking my fist in the general direction of City Hall and the Lee P. Brown building. If Sugar Land gets this thing built, I will absolutely make a trip out there to take a ride on their automated gondola. I promise I’ll post some photos when and if that happens.
UPDATE: Here’s the Chron story, from October 30. I’m adding this as an update and not a new post because there’s not much that’s different. This is the main bit of interest:
City officials will continue working with Swyft City to plan the potential route configurations, technical details, costs and other aspects of the project. The city met with Texas Department of Transportation officials about the project. Parts of the design that cross State Highway 6 and U.S. Highway 59/Interstate-69 must be reviewed and approved.
The study may be completed later this year, according to the release. The city estimates the project will include about 3-6 months of planning and design, 6-8 months of permitting and procurement and 6-12 months of construction and testing.
So they need some TxDOT approval, and the timeline is one to two years. We’ll keep an eye on that.