Urban gondola-like system unveiled by Hornby company

Wednesday, 11 September 2024

An urban, gondola-like system has been unveiled in Christchurch.

A smart gondola meant for cities has been unveiled by a Christchurch company.

Called Whoosh, the system would offer an alternative way to travel busy city streets - above them. But don’t expect Christchurch to get the gondolas first.

“The first commercial project will probably be overseas,” Whoosh chief executive Dr Chris Allington said. It could be announced within months.

A large North American private equity firm invested in Whoosh last year to help the Hornby-based company finish the product and erect a pilot near the Queenstown airport.

Whoosh is a gondola for cities, developed in Christchurch.

At first, the pilot scheme will move passengers around the Remarkables Park subdivision and commercial centre. It could later be expanded to move passengers between the airport and, for example, central Queenstown or other locations in the area.

Whoosh is not a mass transit system, rather it’s a “micro transit” system that connects key locations, Allington said.

In a Christchurch context, it could move people from the Christchurch airport terminal to remote carparks, or Te Kaha stadium to the strip. Or, one day, from the airport to the CBD, Allington said.

The gondola is considered smart because riders would hail a gondola car using an app, much like Uber taxis are hailed.

Riders would be able to choose whether or not to share a gondola car with strangers.

The cars would autonomously pick the best route on the network to a destination.

Cars would hold a handful of people, and riders would not share with strangers unless they chose to, just like a taxi or Uber.

Riders would be picked up and dropped off at stations about the size of a bus stop.

Whoosh is the brainchild of Holmes Group, a diversified engineering firm based in Hornby. Allington is chief executive there too.

“We have been in ‘stealth mode’, working diligently on the technology and quietly collecting and integrating market feedback and insights,” he said.

“After years of development, we’re very excited to be able to present the technology to everyone.”

An artist’s impression of what a Whoosh transport station would look like.

“It was just obvious to me that it had the potential to make a big change,” said Jeral Poskey, a former transport and real estate executive at Google.

With other ex-Google people, he founded a company called Swyft Cities to become a global licensing partner of Whoosh.

“The interest we’ve seen in Whoosh is huge. We’re in discussions with multiple cities in the US who are actively looking to move ahead with Whoosh as a transportation solution,” Poskey said.

Google was a potential customer because it had large campuses with many scattered buildings, Allington said.

The EVs would be summoned with a phone app as shown on the right.

On conventional gondolas, cars are fixed to a cable that is moved by a large motor. Ski lifts work the same way.

On Whoosh, a system of cables and tracks is called a guideway and it is not moved.

Instead, each gondola car is an electric vehicle, or EV, with its own motor and the EVs cruise along the guideway under their own power.

As envisaged, an EV would exit the main guideway to access a station. Other EVs could bypass that station, meaning there was no congestion on the guideway.

“The vehicles are moving at pretty continuous speed the whole way,” Allington said.

It would be very energy efficient, Allington said.

Guideways could be installed along existing roads without disrupting or affecting current travel options, Whoosh said.