ColoradoSkiHistory.com

Anachronism · Advanced Joined: 06 Jan 2010 Posts: 64

I'm interested in the opinion of some more familiar with chairlifts than me.

The Cheyenne Mountain "skyride" is a traditional Doppelmayr CTEC FGQ. Seems to me that properly maintained chairs with property trained operators do not irreverisbly stop due to sensor malfuntions and require rescue teams to evacuate riders.

http://www.gazette.com/articles/ride-103244-sky-zoo.html

http://www.gazette.com/news/ride-103317-zoo-computer.html

What is your take? I suspect that people got stranded because the operators were not properly trained in how to override the fault to run the lift to get the folks off.

Or am I ignorant?

brad · Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 12:44 pm Post subject:

let's not speculate on this board please.
_________________
-Brad

ColoradoSkiHistory.com

Skier Sage · Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 5:47 pm Post subject:

This particular incident is a perfect example of a very common problem with modern lift systems. Back in the old days, lifts were very simple and are not likely to break down due to electrical glitches. Modern lifts however have many new features such as computer controlled drives and cable position sensors (just to name a couple, there are probably many more that I don't know of) that make them much more complicated than old lifts. With all of these extra electronic additions, it is more likely that one of these electronics will fail and cause lifts to have unnecessary breakdowns. Anyone that has dealt with any type of computer should know that they don't work perfectly at all times. I know that every computer that I have owned has crashed at one time or another. So inevitably, when there is a computer that controls a lift, it eventually will crash and cause the lift to breakdown. What I want to know was why the emergency drive did not work.