Did You Know?
A Cable Car System That Gives Commuters Back 16 Days a Year
1. Around 200,000 people commute by cable car in La Paz every day.
Mi Teleférico is the world's longest and highest urban cable car network: ten colour-coded lines, 26 stations, and roughly 33 kilometres of line strung above the city. It was built by the Austrian firm Doppelmayr; the first three lines opened in 2014.
Bolivia is the first country anywhere to use cable cars as the backbone of a public transport system rather than as a tourist attraction.
2. There are 1,506 gondolas, and they leave the stations every 12 seconds.
Not every twelve minutes. Twelve seconds. The system runs from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., and between El Alto and La Paz it moves roughly 3,000 people an hour. A single-line ticket costs 3 bolivianos, about forty US cents — around 40% cheaper than the minibuses it replaced.
3. It exists because of a 500-metre vertical drop.
La Paz sits at about 3,640 metres; El Alto, on the plateau directly above it, is at roughly 4,100 metres and home to around a million people, the majority Aymara. The two are only about eleven kilometres apart by road, but the route is steep, winding and permanently congested. The journey used to take an hour or more each way.
By cable car it takes ten or eleven minutes.
4. Which adds up to sixteen days a year, per person.
That is the figure calculated for regular users of the Red and Yellow lines — the two that connect El Alto to La Paz, and which alone account for more than 75% of all trips on the network. The system is also credited with cutting the city's daily fuel consumption by around 7,000 gallons.
A public transport project measured not in passengers or kilometres but in days of life handed back.
The clock: La Paz is the highest administrative capital in the world, and La Paz–El Alto together form the world's highest metropolitan area, mostly above 3,600 metres.
The city sits at about 68° west, on UTC−4, which is built for the 60th meridian — leaving La Paz roughly 32 minutes ahead of its own solar noon.
So: a city that solved a traffic problem by going over it instead of through it, and measures the result in days rather than minutes.
Sources
- Wikipedia, *Mi Teleférico* (26 stations, ten lines and their colors as of October 2019; opening of first three lines in 2014)
- The World / PRX (200,000 passengers per day; 10 lines, 26 stations; world's longest and highest cable car system; commute reduced from 1.5 hours to 11 minutes)
- SA Expeditions (**1,506 cabins departing at 12-second intervals**; Red and Yellow lines carrying more than 75% of trips; **saving an average of 16 days per user per year**; fuel reduction of 7,000 gallons per day; 3 boliviano tickets and 40% cheaper than minibuses; Doppelmayr)
- Trans-Americas Journey (32.7 km network length; 828 meters ascent and descent of lines)
- Inclusive Infrastructure / Global Infrastructure Hub (La Paz over 3,650 m, El Alto over 4,000 m; El Alto with ~1 million population and Aymara majority; Bolivia being the first country to use the cable car as a backbone)
- La Paz Life (~3,000 people per hour)
- Longitude calculation: La Paz 68.1°W, UTC−4 meridian 60°W → ~32 minutes