The Taelemans´ Blog

As far as technology goes, San Francisco is probably one of the cities with the most high tech companies in the world (Silicon valley is just a couple of miles away). Transportation wise, the city is still very old school. The cable cars are still operated in the traditional manner with manually operated cars. They are the only moving National Historic Landmarks in the United States and the oldest and largest such system in permanent operation. The picture below shows a still manually operated turntable, the cable car gets on the turntable and the operator rotates the turntable so it faces the new direction.

Cable Car Turntable

The modern version of the cable car system is called the People mover. You can find these transportation systems all over the world, for example Vancouver’s SkyTrain, Tomorrowland Transit Authority in Disneyworld, Las Vegas Monorail, …