The World’s Most Under-Appreciated Transit System
It’s probably not what you think
If you ever set foot at a large ski resort, particularly in Europe and the United States, you will almost certainly come into contact with a gondola. Useful for ski resorts, gondolas can carry a high capacity of people per hour over long distances. More importantly, they are critical in spanning large distances in which having a chairlift would be unsafe due to the height. It is completely logical to assume that gondolas don’t have much use outside of ski resorts—at some point too many cables and lift towers would become an eyesore. Gondolas require space, just as any other public transport system. Yet, in some cities in South America, gondolas are legitimately effective at being used as public transit, particularly in La Paz, Bolivia, where the world’s longest and highest cable car system can be found.
I bring up the case study of La Paz to show that in some cases we should be more creative in the way we think about transit. In nearly all Latin American Capital cities, the bulk of public transport is operated by buses traveling on roads (of various quality). Some cities, like Santiago, Buenos Aires, or Sao Paulo, have metro systems, but most don’t. In cases where a city doesn’t have a metro or train system, buses become a necessity. With almost no exceptions, South American cities have yet to crack the code on an effective and useful bus system. Sure, Bogota has the TransMilenio Bus Rapid Transit system, but it still faces severe overcrowding at many points along the line. Cities like Lima, Cusco, Cochabamba fare even worse, with their systems consisting almost entirely of small micros, combis, or trufis, all different forms of small taxis or buses, usually run for-profit by an individual as their sole income. These forms of buses are incredibly chaotic with no set schedule and buses merely following a geographic route, picking up and stopping at a rider’s command. With so many of these buses operating around a city, bus transport has largely been a major environmental and spatial failure across all of Latin America. Enter La Paz.
As I mentioned, La Paz offers a great example of a way in which we transform the way we think about transit. Being one of the highest cities in the world and nestled in the heart of the Andes mountains, the mountainous terrain and treacherous roads make a chaotic bus system a terrible form of public transit for the city. Travel times between the sprawling El Alto suburb and downtown La Paz could be over an hour by bus, simply for a ten mile ride. With the bulk of the lower-income residents, often of Aymara background, living in the El Alto neighborhood, public transit was failing La Paz’ most vulnerable residents. Yet, La Paz’ topography served as a major strength. Echoing ski resorts in the U.S. or Europe, the Mi Teleferico (My Cable Car) system was conceived and initiated in 2012 as a way to create faster connections between La Paz and El Alto; that began the period of one of the greatest transit transformations in history. From 2014 to now in 2021, Mi Teleferico has grown to 36 stations and 10 lines, all for a cable car system! Lines are well connected to each other, and the fare is only around $0.40 per ride (keep in mind that Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in the world)!
What I want to shine a greater light on, however, is just how transformational the system has been. Instead of taking an hour to get from La Paz to El Alto by micro, Mi Teleferico takes only ten minutes! With wait times for each gondola cabin being only twelve seconds, the ease of access is incomparable compared to every single non-cable car system in the entire world! Frequency as low as that has allowed the system to carry up to 6,000 people per hour (10 per gondola). Not only that, but the system is accessible to those who have disabilities, also has free wifi, and is generally safer for women and girls than the local bus network. Mi Teleferico targets key stakeholders and makes access to economic success way easier for those in need.
But back to my original point, name recognition of the system worldwide isn’t as high as say, the London Underground or the New York City metro, which is surprising in many ways because La Paz has legitimately drawn a metro-like map out of cable car lines. This is precisely why it is so under-appreciated. For less than $1 billion dollars (although it is approaching that now), former President Evo Morales built one of the most revolutionary transit networks, taking advantage of the mountainous terrain of the Bolivian capital to truly stand up for those in need. Let’s not forget that this system produces zero greenhouse gas emissions as every cabin is powered by solar energy. When you factor in just how much pollution the gas-guzzling micros produce, the environmental benefits from Mi Teleferico may just be its biggest asset.
Mi Teleferico is not just a transit project. More importantly, it is a psychological one, dramatically changing the relationship between La Paz and El Alto. No longer are the days where La Paz looks down upon its poorer suburb. The Teleferico literally takes riders up mountains in order to get to El Alto. With travel times reduced—the New York times reports that in it’s first two years of operation some 50 million passengers have been saved 652 million minutes in commuting—La Paz has set the standard for creating an all-inclusive transit system that prioritizes low-income residents over all others. In so many cities around the world, and especially in the U.S., transit planners focus first on getting more transit frequency to rich neighborhoods, and in so many cities we see poorer city sections often having a higher auto mode share than the richer parts. This is no longer true in La Paz, and I hope that this article can shed a light on why Mi Teleferico should be appreciated more.
