Cable transport projects have multiplied in recent years and others will see the light of day by 2025. Connecting districts that are difficult to access by road, the cable car is praised for its comfort. But its detractors consider it unprofitable.
In Toulouse, Téléo, the urban cable car, has just celebrated its first birthday. It is located in the south of the city, beyond the ring road, right next to the entrance to the great Paul Sabatier university and its 30,000 students. We see a block of light gray concrete, cables coming out of it, and of course the cabins. Nothing to do with the “eggs” in the mountains, where we squeeze against each other. Here, the cabins are blue and spacious and can carry up to 30 people each.
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Travelers have four benches to sit on, there is even room for pushchairs, scooters and a bicycle. Nathalie embarks with hers. The teacher has just given a course at the university, at the foot of the cable car.“It always freaks me out a little bit, she confides. The height, the images of the gondola taking off. And then that movement, when you arrive at a station. Hold on now! The swing, there, a little brutal. But otherwise, it’s great. A great initiative!”
“It saves me 30 minutes compared to my bike or even car trip. Otherwise, it would be a really big detour.”
Valentine, medical student in Toulouseat franceinfo
Comfort, time saving and panorama
The cabins pass over a hill, Pech David, and the river, the Garonne. To connect in ten minutes the Paul Sabatier University and the Rangueil hospital, on one side of the bank, and on the other a cancer research center, the Oncopole. Below our feet, there is really no alternative to go from one to the other. You have to go back a long way, two kilometres, to the ring road.“It can be complicated during rush hour, testifies Valentine, also from Toulouse. You can get stuck in traffic for tens of minutes.”
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The cable car is a relief for Valentine. The medical student now comes for an internship at the Rangueil hospital by bus, metro and finally the cable car. All with a single ticket that costs 1.80 euros. “It’s much simpler, she enthuses. Finding parking spaces is complicated at the hospital level. It’s often full. And then, the cable car is much more pleasant, and breathable. We are less crowded.” Another advantage: there is little noise in the cabin. And then, the view of the Garonne: the red brick facades of Toulouse in the distance. You can even see the Pyrenees on sunny days.
Sarah, also a student, boards the cable car, often in the evening, at sunset: “I don’t need to take it to go to class, I already live on campus, in a university residence. It relaxes me, I decompress, I get a change of air. I put music in my ears and I contemplate the Pyrenees, and the lights of the city”.
Four to five times fewer passengers than in a tram
Apart from Toulouse, Grenoble, Brest but also Saint-Denis-de-la-Réunion have opted for the cable car. Other projects will soon see the light of day in Ajaccio (Corse-du-Sud) and Nice (Alpes-maritimes) and Créteil (Val-de-Marne). If elected officials opt for this mode of transport by cable created in the 19th century, it is mainly because of the configuration of the premises. Between Créteil and Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, for example, the cabins will fly over several national roads, railways and parks. In 2025, it will be possible to take this cable car with your metro ticket.
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In Toulouse, same scenario. It was either a cable car or digging a tunnel under the hill of Pech David and the Garonne. “A solution from the 1950s, outdated today”, commented Jean-Michel Lattes, president of Tisséo, the Toulouse public transport management company. A financial choice too: the construction site would have cost much more than the 90 million euros spent for the three kilometers of the cable car.
On the other hand, it carries far fewer passengers than a metro, four to five times less than a tram, recognizes Jean-Michel Lattes: “There, we are on the start. We were hoping for between 7,000 and 8,000 travelers per day. During the week, we are more at 6,000. On weekends, at 4,500. So we are on good results, but who , in trend, must progress. There is habituation, use. Little by little, people come. I am not worried”.
“A tourist attraction”
A year after the opening, the milestone set is far from being reached in the pink city. Half of the travelers are occasional. They do not use Téléo for their home-to-work or home-to-study travel, but for leisure, whether they are tourists or residents of Toulouse. “Téléo becomes an object diverted from its initial purpose, tourism”tackle Maxime Le Texier, elected opposition member of the Metropolitan Council within the AMC group (Alternative for a Citizen Metropolis). They install automatic terminals to buy souvenirs, goodies. 91 million euros for a tourist attraction is not acceptable”.
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In addition, according to Maxime Le Texier, the cable car should also have reduced traffic on the nearby ring road. It’s missed. “We don’t have any studies today on the modal shift, says the chosen one. In 2018, a forecast study for the metropolis estimated the reduction in traffic on the ring road at -0.3%. We have a real problem of the massive presence of the car, of pollution in the Toulouse conurbation. So we have to invest massively in transport. And anything that’s an expensive investment, for something that doesn’t have an impact, is frankly inconvenient.”
“In the context where communities cannot spend billions either, 30 million euros per kilometer of cable car, we are not sure that this is the most relevant solution”.
Maxime Le Texier, elected opposition member of the Toulouse Metropolitan Councilat franceinfo
The president of the cable car manager defends himself. Jean-Michel Lattes justifies the financing of it, and assumes the use of cabins by tourists: “Public transport, by definition, is never amortized. It’s deficit management. It’s not so much counting passengers that interests us but rather the functionalities. That our network no longer has zones white, places where you can’t go for various and varied reasons.” Jean-Michel Lattes is also counting on the imminent arrival of very regular bus lines at the foot of the stations to bring more travelers.
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And then, by 2040, the mayor of Toulouse wants to extend the cable car, to connect the three metro lines to the south of the city. The third line is in progress. We see it in Toulouse, the gondola remains very minor in the transport offer. The same pattern is observed elsewhere. Work has started in Créteil and Ajaccio. Others are planned in Nice, in Vitrolles, to connect the station to Marseille airport. Bordeaux, Avignon are thinking about it. But for specific objectives: to join neighborhoods in height, to pass over a river, a ring road, main roads.
A complementary mode of transport
The cable car has a future, but it is not the future of city journeys on its own, explains Pierre-Yves Péguy, transport economist, director of LAET, Laboratoire Aménagements Economie Territoire, from the University of Lyon 2 : “There is potential for development as long as we really think about the purpose of this mode. The cable car is not intended to replace one mode or another. For the challenges of massification, transport mass of passengers, the metro and the tramway respond better to this logic. And then we can have feeder connections, more local, which are more suited to buses and cable cars”.
“The main thing is the complementarity between the modes of transport. And to answer this question: what service are we trying to provide?”
Pierre-Yves Péguy, transport economistat franceinfo
Finally, there is the issue of the acceptance of the inhabitants. Are they ready to see cabins pass over their homes all day long? In Lyon, those who live on the route of a cable car project have forced the metropolis to give up the idea.