Paris's First Gondola Finally Gets a Green Light

[marmar]

(Bloomberg CityLab) By 2025, commuters near the Paris suburb of Creteil should have a new way to get to work: the French capital’s first-ever public transit gondola.

The new aerial tramway, which cleared its pre-construction feasibility studies this week, will be called Cable A, and will link several outlying but populous neighborhoods in Paris’ southeastern suburbs to the terminus of Metro line 8. Traveling a distance of 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles) with five stations along its length, Cable A promises to speed trips from the district into the city center, easing connections between the network of schools, universities, hospitals and public offices scattered across the area.

First proposed in 2008, the gondola line is needed, its promoters say, because adding conventional public transit links to this region would be complicated and expensive: Not only is the area somewhat hilly, it is also bisected by several highways, a TGV high-speed rail line and tracks leading to a large rail freight depot. Laying a tram line would require extensive engineering in the form of bridges and tunnels.

The gondola, by contrast, can sail above these obstacles, and its land needs are minimal: Beyond station sites, an aerial tramway just requires space for the pillars supporting the cables. That should keep the project’s cost at 132 million euros ($149 million). The electricity-powered mode also won’t add the the area’s air pollution or climate emissions, and while ridership estimates have not yet been released, backers say that, by making it easier for commuters to central Paris to access the metro system, it can help with removing cars from the road. ...............(more)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-04/by-2025-parisians-could-commute-by-gondola?srnd=premium

[IbogaProject]

1. I saw a similar proposal for Secaucus NJ

Secaucus NJ, is bisected by waterways and highways, so it is broken into 4 pieces that aren't well connected. The idea, which I can't find on a quick search.