Seven Cities in the World Where You Can Ride an Aerial Cable Car

Cities around the globe have long relied on underground subways, streetcars and buses to ferry people from one neighborhood to another. But a transit revolution is afoot. Urban planners are increasingly discovering that a viable solution to traffic congestion, long commute times and excessive vehicle emissions isn’t found at street level, but higher up. The era of the aerial cable car is officially underway.

“From a public transportation perspective, what people are discovering is that cable car systems are reasonably cost-effective and they are quick to build,” says Steven Dale, principal planner at the civil engineering and transportation planning firm SCJ Alliance in Toronto and creator of the Gondola Project, a blog on the world of cable cars, gondolas, aerial trams and cable-propelled transit systems. “A basic system can be built in a year, and you’re not tearing up an entire roadway or building a massive tunnel. You get all the benefits of linear infrastructure without having to build linear infrastructure.”

Aerial cable car transit isn’t new (and is not to be confused with street-level cable cars like those in San Francisco). The first to carry passengers, the Kohlerer Bahn, opened in the Tyrolean Alps of Italy in 1908 to shuttle visitors to and from a mountaintop inn in Bolzano. Since then, they’ve populated ski resorts and other high-elevation sites, providing a way to bypass steep terrain and give riders the kind of bird’s-eye views no other form of transportation can.

But just because cable cars have historically been associated with tourism doesn’t mean they can’t be used for more practical purposes. Cable car transit has significant advantages over street vehicles in navigating dense urban centers, says Leonard Lee, head of communications at transportation tech company Swyft Cities in Mountain View, California.

“They take up almost no space at ground level, there’s very little infrastructure—you just need a couple poles and to string a cable,” says Lee. “You can expand it quickly, and it can carry a lot more people than you might otherwise think.” Plus, they’re no more expensive to ride than other forms of transit, they’re extremely safe (“Switzerland determined it was the safest mode of transportation in the country,” says Lee), and they’re ultra-efficient.

“There’s no traffic 25 feet in the air,” adds Dale, and gondolas can easily be rerouted if there is a breakdown instead of stalling out until the problem is fixed. Most important, cable cars are a form of transit commuters and visitors actually enjoy riding. “Generally speaking, 80 percent of riders get views, whereas, on a bus, it’s about 50 percent, and subways are even worse,” says Dale.

Aerial cable cars are not without their limitations, however. Poor weather conditions, especially wind speeds of over 40 miles per hour for systems running on a single cable and 55 miles per hour for bi-cable systems, can cause vehicles to sway precariously, and in emergency situations, it can be difficult to rescue passengers stuck high above the ground. Last April, 174 people were stranded for up to 23 hours when a pod on a cable car line in southern Turkey hit a pole and burst open for unknown reasons, killing one and injuring seven. A lack of heat and air conditioning in cars can compound the danger for those who are stranded.

Critics also cite issues like slow speeds (cable cars are limited to around 27 miles per hour), the potential for overcrowding due to the limited capacity of small vehicles, and the inability to cover distances longer than around four-and-a-half miles as pitfalls for the expansion of aerial transit. Nevertheless, in the 20 years since the first urban cable car transit system debuted in Medellín, Colombia, in 2004, they’ve crept across the world in fits and starts. The systems have been especially successful in Latin America, where massive cities and dramatic landscapes make building roads, rail lines and subway tunnels difficult. La Paz, Bolivia; Mexico City; and Bogotá, Colombia, have all added cable car lines to their public transit options.

“They’re spreading like wildfire,” says Dale. With cable cars “there’s a slow ramp up, and then it takes off with 15 percent to 20 percent growth year over year. Our theory is that once cable cars get into a Western jurisdiction, it’ll spread in a similar way.”

It’s a prediction that is already in sight, with cities from Los Angeles to Amsterdam to Paris planning or already building cable car transit systems. “Once Paris opens [in late 2025], the floodgates will open,” says Dale, and not a moment too soon.

“Two-and-a-half billion people are moving to cities in the next 25 years,” says Jeral Poskey, CEO of Swyft Cities. “There’s not space for more car infrastructure, and there’s not time to build new subway systems.” His company’s cable car system, Whoosh, operates autonomous, five-passenger vehicles that move on demand and only stop at the stations requested by passengers. They’re currently in talks with the Houston suburb of Sugar Land to develop an aerial transit system.

“Sugar Land is a good example of where we’re getting a lot of interest,” Poskey explains. “They never planned for mass transit because they were a distant suburb. It’s going to be difficult to impossible to retrofit their city for a train, and they need an option that will fit into a car-built area but that still gives people an alternative way to get around.”

Aerial cable car transit systems do just that. Reliable, fast and easy to use for both everyday riders and short-term visitors, they’re a novel solution to a long-developing problem. They offer not just stunningly beautiful views—something tourist cable cars in places like Palm Springs, California, and Dubrovnik, Croatia charge upwards of $25 for—but an experience that’s integral to maintaining the rhythm of modern cities.

From La Paz to Algiers, these seven cities are leading the high-flying public transit renaissance.

Medellín, Colombia

When Medellín’s Metrocable opened in 2004, it triggered a transformation of the travel landscape not only in Latin America, but also around the world. “Medellín was the breakthrough moment,” says Poskey, and its six aerial cable car lines remain an excellent example of how cities can more easily tie together the neighborhoods at their centers to those on their outskirts. The system’s showstopper is Line K, which soars over the Aburrá Valley and pushes into the steep hills of suburbs once torn apart by warring drug gangs, guerrilla groups and paramilitary commandos from which a powerful culture of street art has since emerged, especially in the now vibrant Comuna 13. Commuting to the center could once take more than two-and-a-half hours. On Metrocable, it’s just 15 to 20 minutes and costs less than 70 cents per trip.

La Paz, Bolivia

It costs less than 50 cents for a ride on Mi Teleférico, the aerial cable car that connects more than two million people across the La Paz metro area in Bolivia. Since opening in 2014, Mi Teleférico has evolved into the world’s most extensive cable car transit system, with ten color-coded lines forming a rainbow over 19 miles of dense, urban landscape. The system was a stroke of genius for the city, where congested streets and an under-resourced bus system—not to mention its steep, hilly terrain—made commuting from one neighborhood to another inefficient, crowded and unreliable. On Mi Teleférico, a ten-passenger cable car departs from a station every 12 seconds. Each ride guarantees unparalleled views of the Altiplano and the labyrinthine city below, as well as easy access to its most popular landmarks, including the Basilica of St. Francis and El Alto Market.

Toulouse, France

In 2022, Europe opened its first aerial cable car transit system in Toulouse, France. On the Téléo, gondolas leave every 90 seconds at peak times and connect three stations across the southern city of 500,000 people, cutting a 30-minute commute down to just ten minutes. Each car has space for 34 passengers, nearly all of whom get choice views of France’s fourth-largest urban center in cabins designed by a Ferrari alum. Moving along around 300 feet above the ground, Téléo connects the high-traffic destinations of Oncopole, Rangueil Hospital and Paul Sabatier University to pre-existing metro and bus lines, making navigating the city quicker and easier for locals and for visitors exploring both sides of Toulouse’s Garonne River. Trips cost the same as earthbound forms of transit, starting around $1.90 per ride.

Algiers

Outside of Latin America, it’s Algeria that has the most cable car installations in the world: 13 lines spread across seven different cities. In Algiers, the 1.25-mile-long Bab el Oued Urban Gondola links the city center’s seafront district to the villages of Céleste and Zghara, the latter of which was long isolated from the rest of the city by its hard-to-reach hilltop location. Costing just over half the price of a subway ticket (about 25 cents), a trip from one end of the line to the other in one of its 66 ten-person cabins takes about seven minutes.

Mexico City

With the opening of its third Cablebús line in September 2024, Mexico City’s cable car transit system can now send over 100,000 people per day flying over its urban landscape of more than nine million people. “Mexico City is maybe the best example of transit,” says Lee. “Every [station] integrates with the subway or with buses.” Researchers estimate that between 2021 and 2023 the system not only reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 18,569 tons, it also doubled, or even tripled, the number of destinations that riders could access in less than an hour. Costing around 35 cents a ride and boasting views unmatched anywhere else in the city, the cable cars have also helped to minimize traffic congestion and parking woes in the densely packed Centro. Cablebús isn’t even Mexico City’s only cable car system—Mexicable, which opened in 2016 and has two lines and a third on the way, connects more distant commuters from the larger metro region. But for now, Cablebús is Mexico’s longest, and a fourth line through the southwestern portion of the city is already in the works. “They’re spreading so rapidly that even I’m having trouble keeping up with it,” says Dale.

Portland, Oregon

Portland’s aerial transit works a little differently from most of those in operation around the world. It’s a tram, not a cable car system, says Dale. “The key difference is that an aerial tramway has just one or two vehicles shuttling back and forth between two stations, while cable-propelled transit systems have multiple cars.” Riders still get the panoramic views of a gondola, but the wait is longer, and the cabin is less comfortable (with standing room and only two seats in each) than those developed for cities in Latin America, Europe and North Africa. Nevertheless, it takes just five minutes to ride the Portland Aerial Tram between the South Waterfront downtown and Marquam Hill, home to a residential neighborhood, university, nature park and hiking trails. At $8.50 per round trip, the views are well worth the cost.

Guayaquil, Ecuador

Up until 2021, Ecuador’s economic capital, Guayaquil, had a problem. Across the city’s Guayas River, the suburb of Durán had tripled in size in the previous two decades, but there was only a single bridge to connect commuters from bank to bank. Instead of building another bridge, a costly and time-intensive project, the city looked to cable cars. The Aerovía began operating four years ago, cutting the 45-minute car trip down to 17 minutes by gondola. Around 40,000 passengers ride the two-and-a-half-mile-long cable car line daily, spreading out across 154 cabins with room for ten passengers each. The transit line has five stops between the two cities and costs about 75 cents to ride.

Shoshi Parks | READ MORE

Shoshi Parks is an anthropologist and freelance writer whose work on history, travel, food and the natural world has appeared in Atlas Obscura, Afar, NPR and a variety of other outlets. She lives in California's Bay Area.