Employees work on an assembly line for the first cable car in the Ile-de-France region, in the factory of manufacturer Doppelmayr, on September 12, 2023 in Wolfurt, Austria (AFP/ARND WIEGMANN)
In a factory in Austria, Albert Jochum is assembling the future “Cable C1”, the first cable car in Île-de-France, a well-known mode of mountain transport which sees a future in cities against a backdrop of climate change.
“We are currently assembling the stations,” explains in Wolfurt, in the green region of Vorarlberg (west), this 34-year-old department head, “proud to be part of the project” for the Paris region.
His employer, the world number one Doppelmayr, opened the doors of its urban cable car production site exclusively for AFP.
After Saint-Denis de la Réunion and Toulouse, projects carried out by the French competitor Poma, the capital region has passed the milestone: by 2025, Créteil will be linked to Villeneuve-Saint-Georges by cable cars flying over the urban area.
A journey of 4.5 kilometers and five stations, to connect 20,000 residents to the terminus of metro line 8.
The cabins will be able to accommodate ten travelers at a frequency of less than 30 seconds, or 1,600 per hour.
– Cheap –
It was the best choice according to Laurent Probst, director of Île-de-France Mobilités (IDFM), the organizing authority for public transport in the Ile-de-France region. “Cable transport is clean, silent, regular,” he told AFP.
An employee works on the assembly of the first cable car in the Ile-de-France region, in the factory of the manufacturer Doppelmayr, on September 12, 2023 in Wolfurt, Austria (AFP/ARND WIEGMANN)
“By overcoming obstacles” such as train lines and roads, it is according to him the ideal solution to remedy the daily hardship of residents, faced with traffic jams and limited supply.
Clever therefore, in landlocked and difficult-to-access areas, but not densely populated enough to accommodate a metro.
And cheap. Expert Hanane Bengualou, founder of IMTER, a planning consultancy company, estimates the investment per kilometer at less than 7 million euros, compared to more than 20 million for the tramway.
“It is an innovative solution which requires little land and which is quick to deploy, because it does not require significant work”, while making it possible to “decarbonise”, transport representing 35% of CO2 emissions in France.
Of course there are obstacles: in addition to the fear of heights, sometimes residents refuse to fly over homes. Administrative procedures remain complex.
The cabins of the longest urban cable car in France connected to the public transport network of the city of Toulouse, May 12, 2022 (AFP/Archives/Lionel BONAVENTURE)
Even if you can hear a pin drop on most of the route, the noise from passing pylons can be disturbing, as can the modification of the landscape, and the trajectories between stations can only be rectilinear.
Many projects have also been abandoned along the way in recent years, such as in 2022 in Lyon in the face of opposition from local residents.
But more than 80 cities have already taken the plunge around the world, so that the “eggs” above heads are “no longer associated with ski resorts”, underlines the specialist.
– Climate challenge –
At Doppelmayr, 130 years old and 3,400 employees in around fifty countries, urban mobility now represents 20% of turnover.
Reinhard Fitz, head of international business development at Doppelmayr, in the assembly plant of the first cable car in the Ile-de-France region, September 12, 2023 in Wolfurt, Austria (AFP/ARND WIEGMANN)
The group, which built “its first ski lift in the Alps in 1937”, is not currently seeing fewer requests in the mountains despite global warming which is endangering certain ski resorts, notes Reinhard Fitz, head of the international business development.
“We of course know that things are moving” in the city, he says, and “we have evolved with our customers” by expanding our offer to urban areas first in Switzerland and Italy then with Algeria – where the cable car is well suited to rugged topography – about fifteen years ago.
We had to adapt: “in the mountains, we operate on a free meadow, while in the city, we multiply the interfaces, this involves a little work,” explains Mr. Fitz.
In populated areas, single-cable technology, the lightest, is most often sufficient, in the absence of particularly violent winds.
Employees work on an assembly line for the first cable car in the Ile-de-France region, at the factory of manufacturer Doppelmayr, on September 12, 2023 in Wolfurt, Austria (AFP/ARND WIEGMANN)
However, there is still a way to convince: decision-makers are “still very attached to traditional public transport systems” and “often, the cable car is not even considered in the planning phase”, regrets the executive.
“We therefore hope that examples like that of the Paris region” will serve as a trigger, in Europe and beyond.
After the cable cars of Mexico or those connecting the metropolises of La Paz and El Alto in Bolivia, India, with its congested megacities, could become an El Dorado.
© 2023 AFP
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