Urban cable car, a new solution for commuters

Residents in the south of Paris have a new means of public transport at their disposal, with the inauguration of the longest and most modern urban cable car route in France. The new line, with a length of 4.5 kilometers, promises to significantly reduce commuting times and decongest the area's overburdened transport routes. The route includes five stations and will connect around 20,000 residents and employees from several communities located south of the French capital with the Paris metro network. According to Île-de-France Mobilites, the regional transport operator, the cable car is designed as a complementary solution to the existing infrastructure, in an area dominated by heavily trafficked railway lines. The cable cars, each equipped with ten seats, will transport around 11,000 passengers daily. The full journey from the departure station to the end of the line takes around 18 minutes.vBy comparison, the same route by bus takes around 40 minutes, in heavy traffic, according to the operator.

Although France also has an urban cable car facility in Toulouse, it is only three kilometres long. Other European cities already use cable transport on an urban scale, but over shorter distances: around 1.3 kilometres in Barcelona and one kilometre in London. There are, however, installations of similar length in the mountainous regions of Europe, where cable cars are mainly used for tourism purposes or to access areas that are difficult to access.

• Model inspired by Latin America

Globally, the most extensive examples of urban cable transport are found in cities such as La Paz, in Bolivia, or Medellín, in Colombia, where cable car networks have become an integral part of public transport and have contributed to the integration of peripheral areas into the urban fabric. The project south of Paris required an investment of 138 million euros and was launched in response to major mobility difficulties in the area. The region is crossed by numerous freight and express train lines, and transport alternatives were limited and extremely congested. Authorities hope that the new urban cable car will reduce pressure on existing networks and become a model for sustainable development for metropolitan transport.