Transportation in New York can evoke exotic locales: the yellow-taxi experience, it’s said, is reminiscent of a rickshaw ride in New Delhi; the No. 6 train is a cattle car; Joe Biden once compared LaGuardia Airport to “a Third World country.” The French Alps don’t come up much. But in 2012 Dan Levy, a Williamsburg resident and the founder of the real-estate Web site CityRealty, was on a ski vacation in Chamonix when he had a revelation. A gondola had arrived to take him to the top of the mountain. Boarding the vehicle, with its metal poles to hang on to, he thought, I feel like I’m in a New York City subway car. Levy, like many of his neighbors, spends an hour each weekday jostling for a spot on the L train. As the gondola soared over snowcapped peaks, he thought, Why doesn’t somebody put one of these things between Brooklyn and Manhattan?

Thus was born the East River Skyway: a plan to make the Western edge of Williamsburg—a riot of new construction that Levy calls “Dubai on the East River”—more like a ski town, by installing a gondola. In Levy’s proposal, the gondola will be privately financed (he estimates costs at around a hundred and twenty to a hundred and forty million dollars) and will make money both through sponsorships, as Citi Bike does, and through ticket sales. A monthly pass will cost about twenty-five dollars. The world’s best gondola-makers are European. Levy wants to buy an Austrian-Swiss-made system called a 3S. “That’s the big, bad kahuna,” he said. It moves fast, and fits up to thirty-five passengers per car—five thousand people an hour. “It’s a minibus in the sky.”

New York already has a gondola system, of course. Levy was telling this story as he waited to board the Roosevelt Island Tramway—the red contraption that has moved people through the skies east of midtown since the nineteen-seventies. “This is a tram, but it’s a similar concept,” Levy said, on the platform above Fifty-ninth Street. The capsule pulled away and rose above the canyon of Second Avenue, rocking slightly. “It’s totally silent,” Levy said. “Zero on-site emissions. All-electric driven.” The tram floated over the East River, and Levy pointed at the view. “Compare that with the subway,” he said.

Levy began pitching the gondola more than a year ago, and he discovered that there are stages of gondola acceptance. First comes incredulity: “People would look at me like I was absolutely crazy!” Then comes curiosity: “They’d be, like, wait a minute. . . . ” Then suspicion: “By minute seven or eight, I’d always get the question: ‘Why hasn’t anybody built this before?’ ” According to Levy, the financial and engineering challenges are manageable. (He plans to announce a group of initial backers soon.) The bureaucratic hurdles are more daunting. But he remains optimistic. “If they can build it in Caracas, we’ve got to be able to build it in New York.”

In January, he got a big break: the M.T.A. announced that in 2019 it will shut down or severely curtail service on the L train—which carries three hundred thousand people per day—for at least eighteen months in order to repair damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. Mass hysteria set in. Levy began considering another gondola pickup station, farther east. And his schedule filled up. “I’ve become a little bit more popular,” he said.

On Roosevelt Island, Levy called a car service. He was heading to the Armory building on Marcy Avenue, where the M.T.A. was hosting a public meeting to address the L-train situation. Rusty subway parts had been set out on a table. A group of M.T.A. officials and local politicians sat on a dais. Levy mingled with the crowd, which seemed to be composed mostly of activists and real-estate people.

He greeted Ken Copeland, of Flank developers: “Have you heard of the gondola? The East River Skyway?”

“No.”

“Do you ski, by any chance?” Levy said, and made his pitch—“It would be five minutes to Delancey and Chrystie.”

“This is actually happening?” Copeland asked.

“I’m optimistic,” Levy said.

Martin Eaton, a writer, disliked Levy’s proposed second station, at the base of the Williamsburg Bridge, near the J, M, and Z lines. “So you’re duplicating the same, exact JMZ path?” he asked.

Levy explained that the gondola needs the coverage of the bridge, in order to stay out of the flight paths of helicopters and seaplanes. “It’d be faster than trains,” he said. “And the JMZ’s going to be totally over capacity.”

Eaton shrugged. “I’m not so keen on your idea,” he said. “The aesthetic part is phenomenal. But I want a third option.”

Jamie Wiseman, of Cayuga Capital, was enthusiastic. He asked, “What do you have to do to make it happen?”

Levy mentioned the hundred and twenty million dollars. Wiseman scoffed. “It costs a hundred and twenty million to change the hubcaps in New York,” he said. ♦