art

That's really cool! I knew they'd been used for industrial purposes, I hadn't realized some already existed that covered such long spans. Thank you for sharing this! And I agree, I really like how comparatively low-impact these are - coming from a place where old train tracks run straight through some lakes, cutting them in half, roads cut through innumerable wetlands, and having seen the special cog trains they had to build to climb mountainsides, ropeways seem comparatively easy. They can go right up mountains and over all kinds of spaces that can't or shouldn't be built on otherwise.

I guess that depends on the type. The ones you typically see for ski lifts (or also in La Paz) move the entire ring rope and all attached gondolas, which is probably quite energy intensive, but allows a high frequency and passenger capacity.

But there are also rope-ways that have a single gondola that travels on a fixed rope through self-propulsion. This is much less energy intensive, but the gondola needs batteries etc and the passenger capacity is much lower as you can basically only have a single one that travels back and forth.

100% on seasonality - that said, I'll admit when I plan and sketch these scenes (and when I pick which one to do), I'm very much influenced by what I think will look really cool. Realistically, I think most ropeways used to link these towns would hug the ground and follow existing roads, as they usually already follow fairly efficient routs, and the road, even if it has fallen into disrepair, would make access easier for work crews building and maintaining the ropeway. Ropeways can definitely cross treacherous terrain like steep grades, wetlands, etc, more cheaply, and with less environmental impact and engineering work than an entire roadbed or train track, so they may be able to take shortcuts that the old roads couldn't, but property rights and attempting to move human transit into undisturbed spaces might generate enough pushback to make following the road easier and cheaper.

Maybe someday I'll do a scene of a ropeway over a crumbling country road (I won't even have to edit the road, just take a picture around my hometown lol) but I've probably done enough ropeways for now.

As for power, I mostly have seen it listed as comparisons to the alternatives needed to move an equivalent number of people, such as trains or fleets of cars, in which case ropeways come out ahead by a good margin. Compared to not providing transportation, it's definitely going to cost more power, but that society would also be less accessible. Hopefully this community has managed to set up enough green energy options and cut enough other power-consuming things to justify it.