This is not your grandad's cable car gondola. Born of an amusement ride and opening to the public in 2026, this remarkably clever kiwi idea offers quick, cheap, on-demand urban transit – that's much more direct and private than public transport. It looks a lot like a big urban gondola system – but Whoosh's as-yet-unnamed autonomous transport pod system is much more interesting. Gondolas are fixed to their cables, which are pulled in long loops; the Whoosh pods have their own motors and autonomous route-switching systems on board, and are free to navigate their way from point to point across a complex, super-modular network that could stretch from one side of town to the other. Cable cars, in other words, that don't all have to go the same way, switching freely between cables that can be much shorter and cheaper than several miles of regular gondola line. In a network that's super cheap and easy to extend, that doesn't have to be constrained by geography or existing road networks. It'll look something like this: It's an entirely new and very clever way of thinking about urban transport. Like an eVTOL air taxi, these pods can happily float over traffic – not as quickly, but certainly much more efficiently and with far less hullabaloo in terms of noise, safety and downwash. Like monorails, they take up minimal space on the ground – even less, actually – but they're not stuck on a set route, so there's no public transport-style connections to switch between; they'll go from any stop in the network, directly to any other, intelligently choosing routes to maximize speed. And they'll be much more like a ride-share service than public transport. "Our view is: people don't want to wait for the bus – they want the bus to wait for them," says Chris Allington, founder and CEO of Whoosh, on a video call from his office in Christchurch, New Zealand. Continue reading: buff.ly/3DW1BUg
