Perth residents could be commuting to work in pods suspended above the city streets rather than catching a train or riding a bus, under a plan put forward by a local businessman.
David Vincent has developed a plan for an eight-station aerial gondola system that he has dubbed the Perth Boomerang. The system would travel from Burswood through the CBD, up to Kings Park and across the Swan River to South Perth, and would serve as both a tourist attraction and a unique means of getting workers in and out of the CBD during peak times. Each gondola unit has an eight-person capacity, and it’s estimated that the system could move up to 7,000 people per hour.
Vincent runs a number of large farmer’s markets in Perth and said that he’s “a little bit used to moving people around” which sparked his interest in tackling the city’s public transport needs. He met with former transport minister Troy Buswell a number of years ago, and has also discussed the idea at length with US aerial lift company Leitner Poma.
The Perth Boomerang name for the design was inspired by the proposed route.
“You’re going into Perth and you’re coming back, so I put two and two together and said well you’ve got to call it the Perth Boomerang,” he said.
Vincent also commissioned rendered images that depict his idea, which includes support poles every 150 metres clad in large illuminated boomerang shapes.
“At the moment we’ve got lighting poles, and my idea is that we get rid of them. The poles that are going to hold up the gondolas would be normal poles but I would clad them to look like a boomerang, and from halfway up you’d have lighting,” he said.
“That way, you’d still get the lighting, but you’ve clad it to make it look like a piece of art.”
Vincent estimates that the total cost of the project would come to around $250 million, with around $20 million per stop (using some prefabricated designs) and another $90 million for the remaining infrastructure.
“As a little bloke mooting something like this, it’s near on impossible, so I’m not that worried about trying to make a quid out of it; I just think it’s a good idea,” he said.
While it may seem quirky, the idea of an aerial cable car system for the city is not new, and there are indications that the State Government has plans for a smaller tourism-focused system that would run from Kings Park down to the Elizabeth Quay redevelopment area, which is currently under construction. Planning minister John Day indicated in March 2014 that a privately operated aerial cable car system was included in the plans, and there have been reports that the Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority is undertaking a study into different options.
Other aerial cable car systems in Australia are mainly tourism-based, with a skyway operating at Katoomba Scenic World in the Blue Mountains that was built in 1958 and a 7.5 kilometre rainforest skyrail in Cairns.
