Paris to build $145M cable car system

Paris is already home to some of the most popular attractions in the world, and the French capital could be about to get its very first urban cable car. Proposed plans for a brand new 4.5 kilometer-long aerial tramway connecting various suburbs in the southeast to the Paris Metro are pressing ahead, with construction 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 the Pointe du Lac station in Creteil in the Île-de-France region within just 17 minutes, less than half the time the journey would take on a bus.

Cable 1 (C1) has an estimated price tag of €132 million (around $145 million) and is expected to serve around 11,000 people a day, with just 30 seconds between cabins at peak times. Each cabin will have room for up to 10 passengers.

While French cities like Brest and Grenoble already hold similar cable car systems, Cable 1 would be the first for Paris if its approved. However, several other proposed aerial tramways are currently in various stages of development.

Paris isn’t the only European city introducing a cable car system. Last year, Amsterdam gave the green light to a 1.5 kilometer-long cable car that will travel across the IJ river, linking Amsterdam-West and Amsterdam-Noord when it gets up and running in 2025.

In London, a cable car built across the Thames river has struggled to attract regular passengers since opening in 2012, and only managed to avoid draining city transport finances because of a lucrative sponsorship deal that is soon to expire.