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‘Chariots of the Sky’ could fly in Atlantic City, gondola maker says
By THOMAS BARLAS Staff Writer, 609-272-7201
Published: Wednesday, April 08, 2009
ATLANTIC CITY — The massive moving sidewalks were never built.
There’s still no magnetic-levitation train humming through the resort.
Now, an international company is proposing another non-traditional way to move millions of people through the city: a $350 million “Atlantic City Chariots of the Sky” gondola system that would carry passengers completely around the island municipality over homes, the Boardwalk, streets, wetlands and marinas.
Officials with Doppelmayr CTEC said Wednesday that the project could carry enough people to places such as the casinos, Gardner’s Basin and the Atlantic City Rail Terminal to get millions of vehicles off the street, and significantly reduce the amount of pollutants spewed by those vehicles. The gondolas could be used in emergency evacuations, and police can ride free and use surveillance cameras installed on gondola support poles to keep watch over the city.
“We will be the safest community in the nation,” said Cynthia Rose Cartopassi, an agent for Doppelmayr, whose U.S. office is in Salt Lake City.
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The gondola system would be a major tourism draw, Cartopassi predicted, adding it could draw groups and be used for special excursions. Casinos could order special gondola cars that could whisk their customers — and especially high rollers — through the city via regular ground transportation, she said.
But it first has to built.
Cartopassi said Doppelmayr has $350 million in bank backing, and has presented the project to the city and agencies such as the state Department of Transportation, or DOT, and the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority.
Doppelmayr would build and operate the gondola network, and hopefully get a lease-purchase agreement with the state or other private entity, such as one or more casinos, she said. Tickets, which could cost about $8 for all-day traveling, would help repay the investment costs, she said.
Cartopassi said the project ideally could be built at no taxpayer expense.
City Planning Director William Crane at first chuckled when reminded of the project, saying Cartopassi has “made the rounds” to at least two mayors and different agencies about “Atlantic City Chariots of the Sky” — something he said would be “very difficult to get built.” The project would, at the very least, need hard-to-attain permits from the state Department of Environmental Protection to travel over wetlands, he said.
When asked if he thought it would be built, Crane said, “Not in the near future.”
Mayor Lorenzo Langford, who attended the gondola project announcement at Garden Pier on the Boardwalk, called the project a “step in the right direction” toward developing a green transportation system.
DOT officials had no immediate information about the project.
Cartopassi said the electrically run project got a major push Wednesday when it received the backing of the International Green Energy Council. That endorsement could make it easier for the project to get federal economic stimulus funding, given its green energy component.
Energy Council President Ralph Avallone, who attended Wednesday’s announcement, called the project a “great opportunity for New Jersey.”
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