Europe’s longest cable car has been unveiled in Paris 17 years after it was first proposed.
It connects Metro Line 9 in Créteil to Villa Nova in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges in the southeastern suburbs of the city, which is poorly served by public transport.
Known as the C1 cable car or Paris Téléphérique, the 2.8 mile-long service, which cost €138m (£120m) to build, is the first of its kind in the French capital.
Its 105 gondolas are expected to carry more than 11,000 passengers per day, each holding a maximum of 10 people, above the busy Paris streets.
Travelling at a speed of 13.5 miles per hour, the journey along the line will take around 18 minutes in total, compared to at least 35 minutes on the local bus service.
The cable cars will arrive at the stations every 23 to 37 seconds and can accommodate wheelchairs, pushchairs and bicycles.
Daily services begin at 5.30am and end at 11.30pm, except on Saturdays when the last service ends at 12.30am.
The affordable service can be accessed with a Navigo pass (a rechargeable smart card for Paris and Île-de-France public transport.)
Passengers without a pass can expect to pay just €2 (£1.75).
Grégoire de Lasteyrie, vice-president for Transport of the Île-de-France regional council, said the project was a cheaper alternative to building subways to connect the isolated neighbourhoods.
“An underground Métro would never have seen the light of day because the budget of more than a billion euros could never have been financed.”
The line’s operation is being managed by Transdev, an international public transport company with operations in 17 companies, including the UK and the US.
As the manager of 15 local bus lines, buses will provide a replacement service when the cable car is not in operation, including night-time, when winds exceed 90kmph, in the event of a breakdown or during the line’s two weeks’ of annual maintenance each August.
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