The term “gondola” can mean many different things. The first that comes to my mind are the boats in Venice, but here I’m talking about a different form of transportation: a gondola lift.
This gondola in particular takes visitors up from ground level to Salesforce Park on the top of the freshly re-opened Salesforce Transit Center. See it in action for yourself in my video above.
So far I’ve tried the gondola twice now to get up to the park since it re-opened on Monday. I was particularly interested in riding it since it wasn’t operational the first time Salesforce Transit Center opened.
While it’s interesting to try it out, it’s pretty silly. Here’s why:
- You can only go up in the gondola: passengers are not allowed to ride back down in it. I assume this is due to space concerns at the top and bottom.
- Unlike the elevators and escalators inside the building you can take to the park, the gondola takes at least three people to operate: one person at the bottom for crowd control, an on board operator, and a security guard at the top.
- It reminded me of the time I took an inclinator (a diagonal elevator) when I was visiting Stockholm, which is to say it’s not that different from an elevator.
Both times I went on it there was a short line. I imagine it’ll be busier on the weekends, and should draw more of a crowd once buses are heading to Salesforce Transit Center again. It doesn’t seem like it would be worth waiting in a long line for since it’s hardly the only way up to the park.
On the other hand it’s a free attraction to a free park. Can’t complain about the price of admission.
