Cable cars, also known as ropeways or aerial tramways, don’t get
much respect. These types of transportation systems, in which a
cabin or other conveyance is suspended from a fixed cable and
pulled by another cable, are often thought of as tourist-movers.
But cable cars can have some practical applications in urban
settings. They are especially useful where inclines are too
steep for conventional mass transit and where they can serve as
feeders to bus and metro systems. They have been successfully
applied in growing cities of the developing world, where slums
are often clustered on precipitous hills surrounding urban
centers. Doppelmayr/Garaventa Group, a ropeway engineering
company, published a brochure, “Aerial Ropeways as an Innovation
Solution for Urban Transport,” that outlines many of the
benefits of cable car systems, including the following: - They
are a low-emissions form of transportation, as their motion
generates less resistance than land-bound transport, so less
electrical power is required to dr