High Above the Gridlock, Gondola Riders Join Urban Commuters

For years, Nelson Ledezma suffered through a two-hour commute by minibus from his home in the Bolivian city of El Alto to his job in neighboring La Paz. The ride was noisy, cramped, and uncomfortable as the buses navigated the traffic-clogged switchbacks on the roads connecting the two cities. Two years ago, though, the IT professional started commuting via Mi Teleférico, a gondola system that cuts his travel time in half. “The bus drivers don’t care about their passengers,” he says. “The gondola is safe, service is good, and the people are well-trained.”

Mi Teleférico was built by Doppelmayr Seilbahnen, an Austrian company that is the world’s leading maker of chairlifts, aerial trams, and gondolas for ski areas. Doppelmayr and its primary competitors, Italy’s Leitner and its French sister company Poma, are looking to cities for growth. Doppelmayr has provided gondola lines to La Paz that have logged almost 50 million rides in the past two years; Poma has built cable car lines in Colombia, Taiwan, and Russia. At least two dozen cities around the world are considering building gondolas or aerial trams for public transportation, Doppelmayr says. New York, Paris, Austin, and Lagos, Nigeria, have all floated the idea. “Urban markets present a big opportunity for us,” says Thomas Pichler, Doppelmayr’s chief executive officer.