Cable car

A cable car is one belonging to the railways for the transport of persons or goods transport, in which

• Vehicles or persons are drawn on sports equipment from a rotating wire rope,
• Cabins, seats or transport containers are moved hanging on a revolving conveyor rope or
• Vehicles or load garlands (similar to a zip line ) on a fixed supporting cable using the fillet rollers travel.

The term " cable car " is in the use of language as a generic historical term connotes rather used for aerial cableways, from which the user has shown funiculars always be identified with the prefix "stand ". Cable cars that travel to the mountains, are as cog railways to the lifts. If several cableways connected to a line, so the separate sections are called sections.

With the ropeway sector in general, the International Organization for the ropeway sector concerned.

• 5.1 Non ropeway laws underlying assets

Classifications according to CEN

Cable cars are classified according to CEN by various criteria:

• According to the nature of the support means (rail, rope, snow, air cushions )
• The number of cables with different functions ( Rope, suspension cable, pull cable, data cable, lightning protection cable )
• The operating mode ( oscillation mode circulating operation )
• The type of vehicles ( cars, cabin, chair, cabin group, tow-bar, drag plate, Loren, tubs, etc.)
• The nature of the connection between the vehicle and rope (fixed or detachable operational / detachable).

Types

Cable-cars

Cable-cars run on carrying or hoisting ropes hanging in the air. They are numerically the largest group by far the cable cars. The term includes aerial tramways, gondolas, chair lifts, chair lifts, combination lifts and cableways.

Rail cable cars

This cable car runs on rails on a separate track body on the floor or piled up or elevated tracks.

• Funicular railways are one or more ropes with which they are firmly attached, moves and usually go with two cars ( cabs, transportation devices ) in opposite directions in the shuttle ( with a Abt'schen Soft as passing loop ). This group also includes fixed-grip Cable Liner Shuttle (see also Automated People Mover );
• Funicular called funiculars with just one car;
• The funiculars in Lisbon, known there as elevators ( Ascensores de Lisbon), but in which the cable is not powered, but the two cars connected by the rope are driven by separate motors in the vehicle.
• The funicular Sky Car on the roof of the Moses Mabhida soccer stadium in Durban, South Africa.

• Cable trams that usually travel together with other road vehicles on the road and of which the last and only system are still left the San Francisco Cable Cars.
• The ankuppelnde to a traction cable Mini -Metro, a cable-hauled Personal Rapid Transit System

Tows

Ski lifts and cable cars to transport sled moving on the ground winter sports are also counted to the cable cars.

Special constructions

• Cable -driven monorail systems such as the monorail Dresden or plants for internal material handling in industries.

• Air cushion cableway. Special cases are air cushion lifts with cable drive as the village train Serfaus ( Austria ) or the Skymetro at Zurich Airport.

Investment portfolio worldwide

The 61st International Conference of the Technical Supervisors ( ITTAB ) published in 2011 following global facilities and transport number of cases:

Foreign language names

The term ' cable car ' referred to in British English generally Luftseilbahnen but in American English cable trams, there are cable cars ' gondola ' ( for cable car) or ' aerial tram 'denotes differentiated ( for aerial tramway ), a funicular is of English in the entire language area ' funicular railway ' or abbreviated ' funicular '.

Regulations

The European Union has the rules in the cable car area by means of the EU Directive 2000/9/EC of the harmonized European Parliament and Council of 20 March 2000 for cableway installations designed to carry persons and the regulatory content of state laws in the Member States with regard to the manufactured and on the market traded components of ropeway installations ( safety components and subsystems ) regulated.

Construction and operation of a cable car must be officially approved by the relevant national laws and regulations. These are for example

• In Germany, the country's cable car laws with a series of regulations and the requirements for the construction and operation of cableways ( BOSeil );
• The funicular Act 2003, 2007, significantly expanded in Austria; the legal requirements of the Railways Act 1957 were regulated before the law of 2003.
• In the non- members of the European Union, Switzerland, the Federal Act of 23 June 2006 relating to cableway installations to carry passengers ( Cable Car Law, SEBG)., expressly harmonized with the EC Directive 2000/9/EC on the scope and technical framework.

Cable cars which have got officially licensed or approved as public transport to operate, are generally subject to both a statutory obligation to operate ( maintain the approved scheduled operation ) as well as a transport constraint or obligation to contract and are required to take passengers, as long as they abide by the conditions of carriage and the instructions of the staff made ​​in respect of the proper operation result.

Not the cable car laws underlying assets

Not on matters covered by the aforementioned laws funicular cable cars include the following items, use the ropes as conveying or power transmission means:

• Elevators that other statutory provisions are subject;
• Water ski lifts that belong technically to the tow lifts, but they are usually not recognized in the laws or regulations by the cable car laws, but by other regulations such as the Water Law;
• Used for agricultural or forestry purposes facilities such as cable routes to Heueinbringung in steep terrain or winches and trolleys for the transport of logs;
• Cables that carry no vehicles (camera cable cars, avalanche blasting cable cars, trolleys )
• A bike lift
• Cable-propelled monorail systems
• Work cable cars
• Military use cable cars
• Cable cars in mining subject to the Mining Law
• Amusement attractions such as Ferris wheels or the Skywalk ( ride ) on the Canton Tower
• Cable cars in children's playgrounds as well as toy and model cable cars
• Moved along by ropes Roll ferries and draw ropes drawn transporter bridges.
• , Even if this means people are moving cables stage technology
• Slap - and high wire of artistry, even if it is driven vehicles

Cable cars as cultural heritage

The Swiss Federal Office of Culture published since 2011 a cable car inventory with details of the Swiss cable cars of particular cultural and historical or technical interest. The inventory contains 67 items of national and 44 objects of national significance and 18 particularly innovative newer cable cars. A total of approximately 3,000 cable cars are registered in Switzerland.

Speed

Amount that can be achieved due to technical and legal requirements maximum speeds

• At funiculars 14 m / s ( 50 km / h),
• With aerial tramways up to 12.5 m / s ( 45 km / h),
• Gondolas at 6 m / s ( 25 km / h),
• At chairlifts 5 m / s (18 km / h),
• With drag lifts with high cable guide 4 m / s and at a low rope guide 1.8 m / s

Detachable transportation devices are accelerated and decelerated within the station, fixed-grip outside the station, but which affects the required length of the stations on the achievable top speed. To save energy, cable cars can be driven with lower speeds. The maximum speed is the preferable method to be able to use to large crowds and high ridership.

Energy demand

Cable cars are mainly driven electrically. Since the drive is stationary at a station, no batteries and drive systems in vehicles have moved, accelerated or delayed. However, ropeways energy must be expended for the train or together with the driving means thereon to accelerate Rope loops extremely heavy and move. The approach is - apart after emergency stops - at revolving conveyor ropes only to the everyday operations beginning necessary detachable driving means are separately accelerated and decelerated. With the diversion of train and haul ropes the wire rope strands rub against each other as a result of this internal friction bending and kinetic energy into heat to be implemented. To reduce the inner cable friction, the wire ropes are lubricated chosen the diameter of the idler and drive pulleys the rope diameter corresponding to as large as possible, and run (vertical, size limited ) support, support and hold-down rollers as Numerous sequence ( trolley, roll battery).

Cable cars can be equipped with modern regenerative motors with frequency converters as prime movers in the braking mode ( Tallast larger than the mountain load) current can feed back into the utility grid as regenerative braking in generator operation. Especially in the " shuttle trains ", the skiers from a higher altitude ski area (glacier) is used to bring back to the valley and cableways, the continuous transport loads downhill.

For all dual cable cars with a common train or Rope loop ( circulation cableways, ropeways, funiculars ) the masses of the up and down moving ropes and empty transport devices are usually approximately in equilibrium with existing height differences. It only needs to drive energy for lifting the mountain moving load, to be expended to overcome friction losses, the inertia and the air resistance. These cable cars take advantage of the potential energy talfahrender loads due to the mechanical coupling directly out to the power requirements for the gain in altitude mountain propelled loads to compensate ( slopes or the cable sag ) or for other energy to be applied at least partially, thereby reducing energy consumption. Compared to other power-driven nutzbremsenden local transport brings the system-related avoidance of separate lossy conversions of electrical energy into mechanical work and returns an advantage that makes cable cars to the most energy-efficient power-driven transport at all.

In a body designated by a ropeway manufacturer comparative study of a strategy consulting firm for the environmental friendliness of the four transport cable car, bus, train and car were found for an occupancy rate of 50 % for a cable car - the uphill but also in the plane, both in summer and winter - (for necessary electricity generation) has the lowest CO2 emissions ( gasoline cars in the middle 248 g of CO2 per person per kilometer (g / pkm ), a diesel bus 38.5 g / pkm, the railway with electric locomotive 30 g / pkm and the cable car 27 g / pkm ).

Security

Like all structures exposed through the supports, masts and ropes of cable cars and the rails and stand constructions of funiculars in danger of being struck by lightning. Since the ropes are passed over rubber lined rollers and there is no earth fault is concluded to help special lightning protection measures, to prevent injury to persons and material damage (more on this in lightning protection at cable cars).

In order to detect technical defects all cable cars are checked repeatedly according to the legal requirements of a technical first acceptance upon completion and operation. Periodical inspections of the wire ropes this method of non-destructive material testing come as the magnetic induction method for the application.

As a result of the fire disaster Kaprun glacier funicular 2 in 2000 with 155 fatalities, the statutory regulations and guidelines concerning fire protection in cable cars have been revised and tightened the requirements.

Worked recovery concepts (such as abseiling passengers, rescue with recovery vehicles or by helicopter in aerial cableways, Notstiegen at funiculars ) or more recently evacuation concepts ( movement of all carriages used in the next station in case of failure of the main drive ) are alternatively the conditions for obtaining a cable car operating license.

Also refer to:

• Safety in air cable cars
• List of cable car accidents

Accessibility

Cable-cars with closed driving means ( gondolas ) may, if this is required for the intended use, a certain size of the nacelles are designed as accessible (from about 8er-/10er gondola ), in smaller vehicles may be restricted at the door width and the space for wheelchairs or pushchairs come. In funiculars may involve restrictions arise because the most of the track inclination customized platforms. In Switzerland must be disabled ( with the exception of ski-and chairlifts ) according to the Disability Discrimination Act cableway from nine seats per transport unit.

Major designers and cable car pioneers

( in alphabetical order)

• Ernst Constam, inventor of the ironing ski lifts
• Denis Creissels (France), is considered the inventor of the same terminal for Monocable and the circulating ropeways system Funitel with two parallel haul ropes
• Artur Doppelmayr
• Karl Garaventa ( Switzerland ), founder of Garaventa AG
• Willy Habegger ( Switzerland ), construction of the first two fixed chairlift, first detachable cabin orbit
• Gerhard Müller invented the system with the Müller Müller- Terminal for detachable Monocable.
• Theobald Obach filed in 1870 an Austrian patent for a cable car with separate ropes for lifting capacity and train with Exzenterklemmapparat, Seilauflagerschuhen and supporting roles
• Julius Pohlig ( Germany ), among others, built the cable car to the Sugar Loaf (1912 )
• Bruno Rixen, a pioneer in the field of water ski lifts
• Josef Staffler (South Tyrol ), builder of the first passenger ropeway in Central Europe.
• Walter Städeli ( Switzerland ), founder of the worldwide activities of former cable car company WSO
• Georg Wallmann Berger invented the first automatic rope -operated clamping system for detachable two-cable orbits,
• Ernst Wilfer, under his leadership, the first double chairlift was built in Germany,
• Adam Wybe (1584-1653) (The Netherlands ), developed one of the first cable cars around the world,
• Luis Zuegg, he developed the system Bleichert - Zuegg

Manufacturer (selection)

• The Doppelmayr Holding AG ( headquartered Austria ) with the Doppelmayr GmbH, Garaventa AG ( Switzerland ) and other subsidiaries, is a global market leader.
• The Leitner SpA (Italy) and Pomagalski ( POMA ) (France ) together form " number two " in the world market.

The Doppelmayr Group and the Leitner group dominate about 90 % of the world market, with Doppelmayr Garaventa and together form a group and Leitner POMA and have the same owner.

• Adolf Bleichert & Co., cableway division sold to Doppelmayr
• Bartholet ( Switzerland )
• Albert Buss & Cie. ( historically )
• Gangloff
• Giovanola ( Switzerland )
• Girak ( Austria )
• Graffer (Italy )
• Hölzl (Italy, until 2002, merged to Doppelmayr Italia )
• Seebacher Mechanical Engineering ( historical )
• Swoboda Seilbahnbau ( Austria )
• Von Roll (until 1996, sold to Doppelmayr ), see also Von Roll system ( cable car )
• Waagner -Biro ( Austria ), cable car division sold to Leitner
• Wyssen cable cars ( Switzerland )

In addition to still exist in the Alpine countries ropeway manufacturer in Turkey (eg STM ), Japan ( for example Anzen Sakudo, Nippon Cable, Taihei ), India ( for example Dadomar Ropeways, Conveyor & Ropeway Services), China ( for example ENFI, Beijing Goodyou Ropeway Engineering ), the United States, inter alia, m. as well as manufacturers who are specialized in the construction of cable cars, ski lifts, chair lifts or material ropeways. Also complete cable cars are not spared from piracy.