Paris already home to some of the world’s most popular attractions, and the French capital may still be on the cusp of receiving its first urban cable car.
Proposed plans for a new 4.5-kilometer-long cable car connecting several southeastern suburbs to the Paris Metro are moving forward and construction is expected to begin this year.
Scheduled to open in 2025, the “Cable 1” project will travel from the Parisian suburb of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges to Pointe du Lac station in Creteil, in the Île-de-France region, in just 17 minutes, taking less than half of travel time by bus.
Renders for the cable car line, commissioned by architecture studio Atelier Schall, have just been released, providing a closer look at the long-awaited project, which has recently released pre-construction feasibility studies.
Parisian connection
Cable 1 (C1) costs around €132 million (about US$145 million) and is expected to serve 11,000 people a day, with just 30 seconds between cabins at peak times. Each cabin will have space for up to 10 passengers.
While French cities like Brest and Grenoble already have similar cable car systems, Cable 1 would be Paris’ first, if approved. However, several other proposed ropeways are currently in various stages of development.
First proposed in 2008, Cable 1 was deemed necessary due to Creteil’s mountainous terrain, which also has a high-speed train line and a motorway, making alternative ground transportation systems less practical.
To build the system, 33 white posts, designed to “blend harmoniously” with the landscape, will be placed along the suburbs.
“Public transport in Île-de-France and the department of Val-de-Marne decided in 2016 to add a new innovative tool for public transport solutions that offers residents of Île-de-France the first urban cable car line in the region ”, says Laurent Probst, managing director of IDF Mobilites.
highly affordable
“The great proposal of the group led by Doppelmayr France will allow, in just over four years, more than 11,000 people a day to save a lot of time, have a lot of comfort and, perhaps, dream a little in the mountains”.
Cable 1 will serve five stops in total, Temps Durables and Emile Combes in Limeil-Brévannes, Emile Zola in Valenton and Bois Matar in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, with a terminal at Pointe du Lac in Creteil located walking distance to subway line 8.
Each station will have only one floor to ensure that the system is “100% accessible” for passengers.
Paris is not the only European city to introduce a cable car system. Last year, Amsterdam gave the green light to a 1.5-kilometer-long cable car that will cross the river IJ, linking Amsterdam-West and Amsterdam-North when it starts operating in 2025.
In London, a cable car built over the River Thames has struggled to attract regular passengers since opening in 2012, and has only managed to avoid draining the city’s transport finances because of a lucrative sponsorship deal that is about to expire.
Source: CNN Brasil
