FutureModes
An occasional blog on urban and transportation policy and planning
September 30, 2023
Cableways take everyone but the United States up in the air.
By Jo Laurie Penrose, AICPUntil recently I had not heard of the journal World Transport Policy and Practice. It’s an international journal on international planning and policy topics. The editor is a professional acquaintance, so recently I have done some peer review for articles for the next edition. This blog post is intended to be a background article for those who aren’t familiar with this mode.
The October edition is focused on cableways as part of the public transportation system. These are not the tourist gondolas you see in a ski resort or the ones that run at Busch Gardens. These cableways, also known as funiculars or aerial rapid transit, are well designed and are funded by various governments in Europe.
Metrocable in Medellin, Colombia. Photo by Jorge Gobbi.
The cableways used in Europe and South America are frequently used for firstmile, last mile trips to and from the main transit system. In Medellin, Colombia, the cableway goes up into the barrios in the foothills. It brings residents into the business district for shopping and employment. The roads were too narrow and steep for decent bus service.
More than 17,000 cableway installations currently exist in Western Europe and the Alps, representing 60% of the global total. European industry has generally held a dominant position in the market, with the ski industry being the primary market for cableway transit.
European cities which operate cableways included Paris, Berlin, London, and Barcelona. Cities in South America that use the infrastructure include Mexico City, Medellin, Columbia; Bogota, Columbia and LaPaz, Bolivia.
Cableways offer some advantages in meeting climate mitigation goals. Their greenhouse gas emissions are almost nil, they’re quiet and run on electricity. According to WSP, a Colorado-based consulting firm, other advantages include:
lower costs compared to other transportation modes.
the ability to overcome significant changes in topography and other obstacles in natural and man-made environments,
the ability to bypass congested roadways and transportation corridors,
the ability to move high volumes of passengers: the equivalent of one city bus every minute. (WSP White Paper, Urban Application of Aerial Cableway Technology, by Chris Wahl and Dave Schumacher, June 2018).
The popularity of cableways hasn’t migrated to the United States yet. New York City operates a short cableway that moves workers to Rikers Island. Portland Oregon jointly operates a system with Oregon Health and Science University. The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System considered an aerial tramway but hasn’t moved forward so far.
Portland, Oregon tram used for transport in the medical district.
While most of the cableways systems are in mountainous or hilly areas, they are also considered potential solutions in other transportation corridors that are heavily congested by automobile traffic. The City of Clearwater considered a cableway system several years ago to take people above heavily congested Clearwater Memorial Causeway that goes to the beach.
The Tampa Bay Regional Transportation Authority completed a study in 2022 to examine the idea but nothing has occurred since then. Interestingly, the area offers ferry services and water taxi services.
Reducing congestion, improving air quality, minimizing greenhouse gas emissions are all good goals. The drawback is, of course, the government funds to create a system and public acceptance of a new mode of transportation.
Aerial tramways are not as expensive as, say, building a road might be. They are costly, though. Estimates of construction costs run between $10 and $30 million.
Construction costs for a road are much more, which include buying right of way. Building a cableway for public transit wouldn’t require buying right-of-way, but it might require air rights permits.
So, cableways may cost less to build than a highway, are quiet, operate on electricity, make it easier for travelers to avoid the congestion on the ground, and
emit fewer greenhouse gases. Why haven’t they caught on in the United States, where we have brutal roadway congestion every day?
A May 2022 report from the Office for Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag (TAB) offered a few reasons: “In the past, individual cable car projects, e.g. in Cologne, Hamburg or Wuppertal, did not progress beyond the planning stage because the citizens involved rejected the projects for various reasons (e.g. high costs, reservations about floating over residential areas).” (Urban Cable Cars, Short Topic Profile No. 57, by Tobias Jetzke, TAB, May 2022).
These reasons sound like an aerial version of Not In My Back Yard syndrome. Public acceptance of transportation projects is always a part of implementing policy. Cableways seem like a viable option in public transportation. They certainly need more research without bias.
Rendering of proposed Paris cableway. Rendering: Cable A, Televal.