Instead of catching the bus or train as part of your daily commute, the world's biggest ski lift maker is proposing a network of aerial cable cars across the country.
Austria-based Doppelmayr's cable car network in the city of La Paz, in Bolivia, has around 300,000 people gliding through traffic every day.
Now, the company's in talks with transport officials about setting up the public transport alternative over here.
"It is actually a really attractive mode to be travelling. People really enjoy it. It's great to be up in the sky," Doppelmayr NZ chief executive Garreth Hayman told 1News.
Doppelmayr has worked on more than 15,000 projects across the globe, including ski lifts and gondolas in New Zealand.
It said it's been working with local engineers and now has a shortlist of 10 sites where aerial cable cars could be used for public transport.
Hayman said the gondolas can transport more people than buses.
"We can move anywhere up to 8000 people per hour per direction, which is around about the same capacity as a light rail system," he said.
The company has its sights set on the North Island first, where it's proposing three routes in Auckland — including two that would go to Auckland Airport.
It's also looking at four routes in the capital, one of which would head to Wellington Airport.
However, not everyone's convinced of the lofty proposal.
An architecture and planning expert at the University of Auckland, Timothy Welch, said a cable car public transport system would be diverting attention away from the current transport projects still being built.
"We're taking away from the focus of things we should really be doing right now, which is building light rail, which is making more bus lanes, more protected cycleways so all the things we have years and years of knowledge and funding behind," he said.
Hayman said the project doesn't come cheap, however.
"We've used a range from $40-60 million a kilometre, depending on where it is," he said.
Transport Minister Simeon Brown said the proposed plans are not a priority.
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