Dnipropetrovsk residents will be able to move through the air

The Dnipropetrovsk inventor has offered to the city authorities a new kind of public transport, the aerial tramway. He had earlier designed the country’s first reversible aerial tramway, connecting the Dnipro’s right bank to the beach on the Monastyrsky Island. That facility is now rusting idle after operating successfully for decades, as the city officials quarrel with the company that has leased it. The inventor is not disturbed at all by this failure, because his hometown is increasingly suffering from the unresolved transport problem. “The aerial tramway as public transport for Dnipropetrovsk has nothing to do with science fiction,” Yershov said at a press conference. “Such facilities have been long and successfully operating not only in the world and Europe, but also in several Russian cities.” Moreover, the inventor lists a lot of advantages. He sees among them the high safety level because, unlike the highway, there are no collisions and congestion on the aerial tramway. Also, this mode of transport is environmentally friendly, it is easy to operate, but most importantly, the aerial tramway does not need expensive roads and bridges, rails and tunnels. A few towers and metal cables will do, with carriages moving passengers through the air along them. Yershov knows cables’ potential well from his mountaineering experience and working as an engineer, because such cables support giant bridges in different parts of the world, including the famous Paton Bridge in Ukraine. Yershov has offered to build the first aerial tramway in the city center, to stretch over the Dnipro in-between the Old and New Bridges with a stop at the Zeleny Island, known for its beaches. According to the inventor, the costs of this aerial tramway will be relatively low at 10 million euros. It will be almost 40 times cheaper than building the subway line which is troubling Dnipropetrovsk authorities for many years. Preliminary estimates for the aerial tramway construction were made at the inventor’s request by his Russian colleagues, who have half a century of experience in designing, constructing, installing, and servicing such facilities. Yershov is no dreamer, too – he has obtained two engineering diplomas and has a keen understanding of the project’s practical side. He has presented his arguments and reasoning in a letter to the mayor of Dnipropetrovsk Ivan Kulichenko. Now he is waiting for the mayor’s response and hoping it will be positive, because the city needs to develop its transportation network with minimal costs. By the way, Yershov says he has designed an entire network of most popular and most problematic routes for the aerial tramway that is capable of moving fast and safely up and down the city’s hills and ravines, so widespread in Dnipropetrovsk. These topographic features make the great city’s streets and avenues almost inaccessible when iced over in winter. Despite the obvious advantages of the aerial tramway, the officials and members of the city council are skeptical about Yershov’s ideas, noting that the city has no money for their implementation, while finding investors is next to impossible nowadays. But the inventor is remaining optimistic, saying that every new and unusual thing had its growing pains.