Gondola Fever Strikes Queenstown!

Like the Otago Gold Rush of the 19th Century, its 21st Century counterpart, the gondola rush, has come to town in Queenstown. What is it and will it work?

Let me start by stating the obvious. Queenstown already has a gondola in the form of the Skyline Gondola that ascends from the town centre and affords spectacular views from its top station.

The Skyline Gondola top station views over Tāhuna/ Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu are simply spectacular. Photo credit: Darren Davis

This is a classic situation where gondolas work because they ascend a 170 metre steep slope to Bob’s Peak that would be very difficult by achieve other means, and separate willing visitors from $66 of their money to give them those spectacular views and get them back down again. While you can climb the Tiki Trail to the Gondola Top Complex, this is only recommended for the seriously fit.

This use case for gondolas brings us to the similar but much more intensively used use cases than mountain ascents for skiing, snowboarding and general sightseeing. This is their use in Latin American cities where, unlike the more general situation, the poor tend to live in informal settlements clinging precariously to hillsides while better off people live on more solid ground in the valleys below. La Paz is a particular case in point given its high altitude with the city at 3,650 metres above sea level and its poorer communities in El Alto at 4,000 metres above sea level where it is getting decidedly difficult to breathe. El Alto is poorly connected by narrow, winding, congested roads for the steep descent into La Paz where most jobs and educational institutions are located. Conventional public transport gets stuck in this same congestion. The response to this is Mi Teleférico. According to Wikipedia “the system consists of 26 stations (36 if transfer stations are counted separately per line) along ten lines... Further lines and extensions are in planning or construction”¹

It is now the world’s largest gondola network and has transformed public transport in La Paz, addressed glaring socio-economic inequalities and reduced air and noise pollution. This is the poster child for gondolas done well as public transport. Its Spanish tagline “superando límites”/ “overcoming barriers” is decidedly apt.

Línea roja/ Red Line of the La Paz Mi Teleférico system. Image credit: EEJCC own work in Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Closer to home in Aotearoa, the same outfit, Doppelmayr, which implemented the La Paz network are pitching a similar network for Queenstown, arguing on similar grounds around topography and constraints in the roading network. And Woosh are pitching a different version of the same model. As anyone who has been to Queenstown of late can attest, the congestion is real and the single biggest negative to what is otherwise a stunning year-round visitor destination. But the congestion is the product of New Zealand’s fly and drive tourism (and general transport) model. Most visitors head straight for the rental car and camper van counters at Queenstown Airport while those in the know head to the bus stop for the all-day, every day frequent bus into town that costs just $2 on a Bee Card (and eventually a nation-wide Motu Move card).

In fact, Queenstown’s bus system fares remarkably well in a town with only 28,600 people (Stats NZ, June 2024). In the nine months to March 2025, Queenstown’s public transport carried 1,489,729 trips². This equals 70 trips per capita year, similar to Wellington (but conveniently forgetting the much higher proportion of visitors in Queenstown). This isn’t bad for a network stuck in the same grinding congestion as all the other traffic.

It’s clear that Queenstown cannot build its way out of congestion and not for want of trying. It has just spent $128 million the first stage of a town centre bypass, made up of around 350 metres of new roading connecting a couple of previously disconnected streets which were in turn upgraded. It took four years of major disruption to build and ran $40 million over budget. The Press described it as “Queenstown’s controversial $130m ‘road to nowhere’”³ and no funding is in sight to actually complete all stage of the bypass. Which is of limited value anyway given that only a very small proportion of traffic actually passes through the town centre with the vast majority of trips terminating in the town centre itself.

Queenstown Town Centre Arterial stage 1. This is what $128 million buys you nowadays. Image credit: The Press.

Not content with this, the New Zealand Transport Agency is doubling down on roading in Queenstown with $250 million committed to upgrading the notorious BP Roundabout at the intersection of state highways 6 and 6a, a modest upgrade to the Frankton Bus Hub and a new roundabout where State Highway 6 meets Howards Drive.

This is what you get for $250 million these days. Plus a roundabout at Howards Drive to be fair. Credit: Waka Kotahi/ NZ Transport Agency

So it’s clear that it isn’t money that is the problem. It is how it is being spent and where the road space is going to. The light green kermit above shows the extent of bus priority at Queenstown’s busiest and most congested intersection and a major pain point for existing bus operations.

So enter stage left the gondoliers. Their solution is simple. To go above the congestion and give people a congestion-free journey. Sounds great, doesn’t it. Until you think through the detail. Which Nicholas Reid did in thought-provoking detail in his piece, Gondolas for Mass Transit, on Greater Auckland. I highly recommend reading his piece but the TL:DR is in his conclusion “But overall, it’s clear that cableway transit is something that works well where it works well (like climbing mountains), but it’s not a replacement for most regular bus or rail transit routes. It’s a niche option, and that niche seems even smaller than you might think”⁴

One of the gondola backers, Ross Copland, inadvertently gives way one of the key downsides of the Doppelmayr backed gondola proposal in this Radio New Zealand piece: “It's almost a direct route into Queenstown, but importantly it bypasses a lot of those residential areas where the visual effects would be quite significant⁵." The whole point of public transport is to serve land use, not actively avoid it to avoid NIMBY complaints of aerial trespass.

Queenstown indicative gondola network. Image supplied to Radio New Zealand

But apart from that is the question of speed. A typical gondola travels at 6 metres per second but has to come down to a near halt at stations so that people can get on and off. Which begs the question of how people will get on and off with luggage, pushchairs, wheelchairs, skis and snowboards. All things that are a regular feature of a year-round resort destination. At best you are likely to get an effective speed of 12 kilometres per hour so you are likely to look down from your gondola and see yourself being overtaken by people on lime scooters and bicycles which have higher average speeds.

The gondola network shown would most likely requiring changing at key points as gondolas are typically point-to-point. In addition, they do not deal well with peaks and this is an issue even with relatively high capacity systems like La Paz. There are long waits around school and work start of finish times given that capacity is fixed. Which is great at 11pm when waits would be minimal but not so great at 8am when you need to get to work or school on time.

Which brings me back to the humble bus, which does remarkably well in Queenstown but is hampered by a lack of priority and the very unusual peaks of a tourism destination - for example outbound 10am when visitors have had their breakfast and inbound in winter around 4pm when ski slopes start to close.

Taras Grescoe has recently written about the Roam bus network in Banff, Alberta, Canada⁶. This is very similar to Queenstown. The service area of Banff and Canmore have a combined population of 23,000; it’s an extremely popular year-round resort destination; the buses cost $2 and it carries 2.7 million people a year. A tad more than Queenstown but not that much. In both Canada and New Zealand, it’s the humble bus that gets you close to where you want to go (and not swooping above where you want to go) but in both cases, a lot more priority would go a long way to making public transport the mode of choice of Queenstown. Which would cost a lot less and make Queenstown a lot more pleasant than continuing to double down on roading. or dreaming big on miscellaneous gadgetbahns.

Queenstown bus. Photo credit: Darren Davis

The humble bus, prioritised at traffic signals and congestion hotspots, with boosted frequency and maybe even 24-hour operation, is just what what the doctor ordered to cure Queenstown’s traffic woes. And it doesn’t cost the earth, take years on end to deliver and provides real benefits to real people sooner than the futile quest to build Queenstown out of congestion.

1. Mi Teleférico article from English Wikipedia

2. Otago Regional Council media release, 30 May 2025

3. Queenstown controversial $130m ‘road to nowhere",’ The Press, 30 January 2025

4. Gondolas for Mass Transit? Nicholas Reid in Greater Auckland

5. 'We want to get Queenstown moving again' - cable car companies target resort town, Radio New Zealand, 27 May 2025

6. Rocky Mountain Straphanger, Taras Grescoe, May 30 2025, subscription required and highly recommended.