Gondolas raised as urban transit solution

Instead of fighting traffic or waiting for a taxi, rail travelers arriving at New York's capital may one day soar across the Hudson River in glassy pods suspended from cables.

That futuristic image could become a reality if an engineering firm's urban gondola plan comes to fruition. It's one of several aerial cable projects being pitched in cities from Austin, Texas, to Washington, D.C., to solve public transportation problems by going above the existing maze of congested highways, bridges and rails.

"We haven't seen any major adoption in North America, but there has been so much change and such growth in the technology in the last decade that it's only a matter of time," said Toronto-based urban planner Steven Dale, who created The Gondola Project to provide technical assistance for such ideas.