Gondolas for Liverpool

Liverpool is a big city but like most cities its centre is relatively small. The only problem with Liverpool is that the centre is on two sites: the old centre around Lime Street, the James Centre and the City (as far as the Town Hall) and the new centre on the waterfront around the Pier Head and the Albert Dock. For the new centre there have been several recent proposals for expansion, including a vast shopping complex and a new site for Everton football stadium.

In addition, the new centre has an industrial complex and residential up-beat apartments built in what were once the old dockland buildings. Liverpool has an underground railway system that traverses the River Mersey but there are only four underground stations on the Liverpool side of the Mersey - James Street, Moorfields, Lime Street and Central. The last two are in the heart of the old shopping area. During the 19th century Liverpool was among the foremost cities in Britain in terms of innovation of travel around the city. The city's network of tramcars rivalled that of modern-day San Francisco while its overhead railway, which ran the length of the docklands, rivalled that of modern-day New York. Sadly, both of these systems of transportation are no more. Buses and taxis ply their trade where once these transport systems ruled supreme.

Recently, on a visit to Switzerland, Liverpool City Councillor Dan Smith encountered the gondola transportation system in operation at the foot of Mount Pilatus near Krienz next to Lucerne. The red gondolas are an impressive sight as they continually ply their way from the terminus station at Krienz, through an intermediate dropping off point, to the higher station some 4500 feet above sea level (an ascent of some 3500 feet) two-thirds of the way up Mount Pilatus.

The journey covers several miles and takes around half an hour to complete. Dan was not able to count the number of gondolas on the continuous belt system but he reckoned it to be several hundred. Each gondola could carry four people so that the whole system must have been able to carry at least 1000 people at any one time. A gondola is a bit like a four-seater bubble car that is suspended from a cable that runs in a continuous loop-over circuit and is supported from pylons. The gondolas at Krienz can be up to 100 feet above the ground, although more often the distance is 20 to 30 feet. Dan felt that perhaps a gondola transportation system might be the answer to what Liverpool really needed.

Such a system would be highly innovative in the UK and be an attraction that would outperform the new tram systems in either Sheffield or Manchester. He felt an obvious first route would be from Lime Street to the Pier Head with maybe an intermediate station in the city close to the Town Hall. The system might also be extended to other parts of the city in due course, e.g. Anfield and the Liverpool football ground, the Liverpool University and John Moores University campuses. Dan mulled these ideas over and decided that perhaps some sort of feasibility study would be required.

At the next meeting of the City Council he put forward his ideas and suggested that perhaps a feasibility study would be worthwhile. His colleagues were quite interested in the idea but pointed out that they could not really waste ratepayers' money on a ‘pie in the sky' scheme. Dan said he thought it might be worthwhile to find out ratepayers' attitudes to such a scheme in the first place. If these were positive, he argued, then his idea would have some support and it would be worthwhile taking the scheme on to the next stage where one might assess its costs and benefits.

Questions
1. Is Dan right in suggesting one should assess customer attitudes to such a scheme prior to undertaking a cost-benefit analysis? Explain.

2. Draw up a research proposal indicating how you would set about measuring ratepayers' attitudes as Dan suggests.

3. In making a decision about this project, what information is required? What role would marketing research play in providing the relevant information - i.e. what further information is required?