Cable cars reach urban public transport

Cable cars have taken center stage in Latin America as a means of mass urban transportation, notably in Medellín, Colombia, where Metrocable serves to integrate disadvantaged neighborhoods with difficult access located at the top of the hillside. Similarly, the Mexican capital has just inaugurated Mexicable, a system of gondolas that connects the citizens of the neighborhoods of Ecatepec, one of the most insecure cities in the country, with other means of public transport, reducing to 17 minutes a journey that takes 40 minutes by land motorized transport. Now, the cable cars, as a legitimate public transport system arrive in Europe, with Greater Paris as a pioneer. In 2021 they hope to launch Téléval in the southwestern suburbs: with a length of 4.4 kilometers and five stations, it is estimated that the line will carry 14,000 passengers daily.

This will be the start of a larger network, as the Paris Region or Île-de-France plans to introduce 12 additional lines of gondolas. According to the president of the region, Valérie Pécresse, it is a “clean, silent, and regular” means of transport, which costs much less than a tram with “half the installation time”, as it easily overcomes existing physical obstacles. , and offers the capacity to transport 5,000 passengers bi-directionally every hour in a predetermined journey time.

There are some precedents for cable cars in European cities, such as the Emirates Air Line inaugurated in London with a view to the Olympic Games in 2012, which have not earned a regular influx of public. However, the Parisian project it differs from London in that it is not conceived as a tourist attraction and does not duplicate the journey already made by an existing means of transport (bus or tube). On the contrary, the cable car lines are intended to complete the metro and suburban train networks of metropolitan Paris. Connectivity between the metro, which serves intramural Paris, and the RER commuter train network, which serves the periphery, is not ideal and requires walking in some suburbs, some of which are more dense than the center itself. The gondolas are expected to facilitate these transfers and make the metro more accessible to residents of the periphery.

The not so positive part of cable cars for citizens is their unquestionable visual impact and the fact that they can disturb the privacy of some homes from above; In any case, the “cheap” alternative of the trams will cross the skies of the Parisian periphery in four years.