Watch: Mexico City launches first line of cable car system
Follow UsStory highlights
Cable cars are seen as a cheaper, quicker way to bring public transport to poor communities located high up hillsides. Since they’re airborne, the car lines also don’t have as many difficulties with Latin America’s notoriously difficult issues of chaotic development, bad traffic and lack of rights-of-way.
Mexico’s capital and the most-populous city in North America, Mexico City has launched the first of the several cable-car lines serving the poorer outskirts of the city of 9 million.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum inaugurated the first two stations, separated by 1.7 kilometres (1 mile), in the poor neighbourhood of Cuautepec, on the outskirts of the huge metropolis.
Each Cablebus air cabin has 10 seats and large windows for ventilation, due to the coronavirus pandemic. At the moment only six passengers, who must all wear face masks, will be allowed to board.
Cable cars are seen as a cheaper, quicker way to bring public transport to poor communities located high up hillsides. Since they’re airborne, the car lines also don’t have as many difficulties with Latin America’s notoriously difficult issues of chaotic development, bad traffic and lack of rights-of-way.
By June, the line will run almost 9.2 kilometers (6 miles) from Cuautepec, a working class neighborhood on the northern edge of Mexico City, to the nearest subway and bus station.
The stretch inaugurated Thursday covers just 1.7 kilometers (1.06 miles) of that route, to the neighborhood of Tlalpexco.
The system was developed by the Austrian company "Doppelmayr" which has built cable cars in 80 countries.
(With inputs from agencies)