"Cable 1" Takes Off Over Paris - And We Rode It!

We travel to the edge of Paris to ride a new five-station urban gondola that extends Metro Line 8, showing how aerial transit can beat ground constraints, cut commute times, and invite better station design. Along the way, we talk with David Rambert, Project Manager for Architecture and BIM Manager at Atelier Schall, the agency responsible for the C1 station designs. He gives us more insight about accessibility, costs, and why gondolas fit this corridor.

• reasons a gondola beats a rail extension (in this scenario)
• six-year design–build timeline and lower capital costs
• right-sized capacity around 1,600–2,000 people per hour per direction (pphpd) with strong ridership
• accessibility choices, including level boarding and tactile paths
• station design that blends into the  landscape and supports TOD
• travel time cut from 35 to 18 minutes with 30-second headways
• quieter operations and lower operating costs than buses
• global context from Colombia to La Paz and Mexico City
• where gondolas fit between bus and rail in a network

If you want to see more from our interview with David, we posted a longer version of the interview on Patreon, where you can support the show directly. Send us an email if you've got something like this that you want us to go check out in the future. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:18

This week we head to Paris to talk about Paris's latest metro line extension. But instead of actually extending the Metro Rail line, they did it with a gondola. All of this and more coming up on Transit Tangents.

SPEAKER_03 0:33

When most people think of gondolas, they probably think of a ski resort somewhere in the US or the Alps, or they may even think of the little boats that you paddle through the Venice canals.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

But when Chris and I think about gondolas, we think that they are a massively underused form of public transportation.

First Impressions At Pointe Du Lac

SPEAKER_03 0:48

We have talked about gondola systems a little bit in the past, and Lewis has actually had the opportunity to ride urban gondolas in the past in Colombia. But today we're going to check out the world's newest gondola line here in Paris. Extending from the end of Metro Line 8 in southwest Paris is where the gondola starts. This line features four stations over four and a half kilometers, and we're going to ride the entire thing today.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

In addition to riding the system and discussing all of its details, we also had the chance to speak directly with David Rampere, Chief of Project Architecture at Atelier Shah, the firm who actually designed this new system. We'll hear from him a few times throughout the episode.

SPEAKER_03 1:25

So we made it all the way to the end of Metro Line 8. Very long line. It was a very, very long line. We started sort of more central Paris, right by Notre Dame, and came all the way out to Point du Lac. For anybody who is a Francophone, uh, we are going to mispronounce a lot of things today. Yes, so give us a apologies in advance. Give us a little bit of grace.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

If you thought my German pronunciation was bad, wait till you hear my French pronunciation. Friedrich Rhodo. F-R-I-E. Friedrich.

unknown 1:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:54

Well we made it to the end of the line, and what's really cool is uh as soon as you get off of the metro here, you walk through the turnstiles, and the gondola is right there.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Yeah, this essentially acts as an extension to the Metro Line 8. Uh, the Metro Line 8, for context, covers almost 24 kilometers, uh, making it one of the longest in the city.

SPEAKER_03 2:14

Metro Line 8 has 38 stations, which means it's tied for the most stations, and it carries about a hundred million passengers a year.

Why Gondola Over Rail Or Bus

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Yeah, and even, you know, we were kind of riding at midday here, and there were people on it right up until the last couple stops here. And people even did ride all the way to the end here and transferred right onto the gondola, which is behind us. So uh the gondola here is basically an extension to this Metro 8 line. Later in the episode, we'll talk about why a gondola was chosen instead of just continuing the metro further south. Um, but this station area, as we're just kind of looking around, it definitely feels like you're not in the city anymore necessarily. We are on the far outskirts of Paris. Uh, there's a highway right here. Uh, I know that there's a rail maintenance yard for the end of line eight, so it's a storage facility for the end of the metro. Um, but overall, it doesn't feel like you're in downtown Paris anymore. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

From here, we are gonna go ahead and jump on the C1, which is the cable car behind us, and follow it to the next stop.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

If you haven't liked this video already, please do. It helps get the show to more people. Ooh. These are pretty big. 10-person gondolas.

SPEAKER_03 3:21

Yeah, this is large. Wow. After leaving the end of the eight-line, we've now traveled over a lot of industrial sites uh here in Paris. We've seen uh some of the rail yards, we see other uh railroads, highways, and now we're just kind of over an industrial staging area. So we rode from uh Pointe du Lac to uh Limel Brevin.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

It went way higher than I was expecting, actually, I will say.

SPEAKER_03 3:47

It really did. The views are really, really incredible from there. And uh, as I said, on the gondola, you could kind of see that we were passing some pretty industrial areas, and it was interesting to see what was uh what was below.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

Yeah, and that is a big part of the reason why this line was chosen to be a gondola. There's a few reasons. One, we covered quite a bit of interesting terrain in between, uh, not necessarily like physical natural barriers, but more so uh man-made barriers. So there was a large kind of maintenance yard, rail yard for freight as well as passenger train service. There was a bunch of industrial facilities. Uh, you also had a highway in between. These are all things that you would have had to kind of build over or under with rail, um, but it would have been much more expensive to be able to do so.

Design Choices With Architect David

SPEAKER_03 4:30

Yes, underground would have been much more expensive, and we will talk about the cost benefits of building the gondola versus going underground or over ground uh later in the episode. But one of the other major benefits of the gondola, and this is something that we actually talked about on our gondola episode, is that these systems are faster to deploy. This entire system took about six years in total, and that included the design and build stage. So it's three years of the design, three years of build. But if you compare that to basically any metro line, especially in the US, you're looking at a decade to build most of those lines. Right.

SPEAKER_02 5:04

And I would say too that like there's probably scenarios where that build time could be significantly faster, even. Uh, I just think to like the ski industry where they will build a lift over a summer in many cases. So uh obviously you've got a little bit more logistics to figure out here with road crossings and utilities and all that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 5:21

Um and the design of the system is definitely a little more aesthetic. I mean, you see the towers have these sort of uh tendrils coming off the top. Like they're like tendrils. But uh it definitely they put a lot more effort into making sure that it's aesthetically pleasing as well.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Speaking of the design, we mentioned at the intro that we had a chance to speak with a chief project architect who worked on this project. This is David from Atelier Shaw. They won the bid to design this gondola specifically because of how they got creative in the design process to solve problems trying to navigate this area. To give you a glimpse behind the scenes of some of their creative thinking in the planning process, here's some background on how they won the bid.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

The decision of making a cabo car uh was made by uh EDFM, which is uh the the enterprise that that is in charge of uh regulating and planning the transport system in in Paris. We we took part for one year and a half to uh competitive uh dialogue with uh EDFM. EDFM didn't uh show a complete program what they wanted. They asked us for results. So we didn't have uh you have to build this, this, that way. They said you have to go there and there, and you have to find solution to do that to do it.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

That sounds like a fun problem-solving challenge.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Yes, and quite open on uh on the way we we we were about to solve the problem. They did studies, like pre-studies, uh, and the pre-studies were showing big buildings, you have to come up with elevators and so. In this competition we we win because uh we we worked with Doppelmeyer to lower the level of the station. And our role as architects were to imagine public space and the ground that were uh coming up without elevators or mechan any mechanics.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

We'll hear more from David later in the episode, but let's get back to some final details on this station before riding further down the line.

SPEAKER_03 7:20

When we were looking around this stop, there's not a whole lot, but there is some uh transit-oriented development that has popped up just at the corner next to the gondola entrance.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

Yeah, and it's fairly dense. I mean, there's quite a few, it definitely looks like apartments on the upper levels uh with a bunch of shops, restaurants, things like that on the bottom level, so a nice mixed-use development. We also have a nice like bike parking structure right in front of us here, and this would be a pretty nice spot to live if you needed to connect somewhere to the end of that Metro Line 8. From here, we're gonna pop back on the gondola and check out the next station.

SPEAKER_03 7:50

From stop number two at Limel Bravant, we are now at stop number three, which is Valentin. Valentin.

Capacity, Ridership, Accessibility

SPEAKER_02 7:58

Uh this station also has a mixture of new transit-oriented developments, still kind of connected to the one at the previous stop. These are fairly close together, uh, as well as some older housing stock that's in the area as well. That's definitely been here for a while. So interesting to see the mix. There's also some of the, you know, some construction is still happening around the station, but quite a bit of nice looking green space. And it seems like there's quite a few kind of areas that they've set up that would be nice to hang out in.

SPEAKER_03 8:24

Another reason why a gondola system was chosen over extending a metro is actually capacity. A metro system which could carry up to 20,000 people per hour, that might have been a little bit of overkill for this part of Paris.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Yeah, definitely would be overkill. Uh the gondola though is kind of the perfect uh capacity level, in my opinion, where you're sitting at currently around 1,600 passengers per hour. It could move. That number could actually be flexed up to 2,000 passengers per hour, as they haven't fully fit as many cabins on the gondola line as they could if they needed to expand it. This thing was initially projected to have roughly 11,000 passengers per day. So that 1,600 per hour number works out fine. And what we've seen so far, it is the middle of the day, so not rush hour by any means, but there's no waiting at any of the stations. People are kind of steadily getting on and off of these, but uh no major crush load of people all getting it on at once.

SPEAKER_03 9:15

Right, but early reports have shown that the ridership is higher than they expected, somewhere closer to 12,000 a day versus that 11,000. So people are riding it.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

As this project was being built, there was a major emphasis to try to make this as accessible as possible. And stairs were avoided at all costs, and you really can get into all of these stations without stairs, but this one is a little bit of a stretch. You've got quite a bit of a uh ramp maze going on here. In all fairness, basically every other station has no stairs at all, and the station we are standing at here has slightly better access on the other side. As we boarded the gondola to head to the next station, we talked about how this solution really is set up well from an accessibility standpoint.

SPEAKER_03 9:54

Gondolas, man, the only way to travel. This is a really nice experience, just walking straight on, sitting down. It's nice, it's spacious, it's kind of everything you want.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Yeah. And it's also like it from an accessibility standpoint, there's no step when you're getting on, it's exactly level boarding. The seats that we're sitting on actually do fold up uh so that you could have space for a wheelchair. Um yeah, definitely interesting.

SPEAKER_03 10:20

If you need assistance, there's a call button for you to be able to chat with somebody on the other end. Um and yeah, I mean it's it's simple.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

There's not oh, there's actually a camera in there. There's a camera. Yeah, you notice that. So you've got a security camera. For more on all of the thought that went into accessibility from a design standpoint. Here's David.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

On this project, uh we spend like six months or maybe more to work with organizations that uh represent uh people with uh reduced mobility. And also we travel uh in Europe to to test different uh uh gondola systems that already existed. And really we really worked with them. Uh you see their special paths for uh blind people. Uh also we worked on the speed of the system for people with uh ware share. So we worked on many systems to be very sure that uh it is as inclusive as possible. And uh yeah, we we get some feedback from the the organization we we worked with, and they are really happy and they say that this system is uh uh pushing further how we can be inclusive in uh public transport.

SPEAKER_03 11:29

We made it to the next stop on the line, which is La Vegetal, and this is a really nice station area. One thing I'm really impressed with is sort of how the stations blend in with the landscape, which is something else I think we are going to talk to uh David, one of the chief architects, about.

Operating Costs And Connectivity

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Yeah, and this is a unique station as well because the gondola essentially makes a 90-degree turn here. Uh, you it it incorporates really well into the kind of outdoor setting. And the nice thing about the gondolas in general is that they're fairly quiet. Like we're very close to the station, and like even a bus pulling in and out here would be louder than what's currently going on. So definitely interesting to see that. Another thing we wanted to talk about here is how the gondola has affected travel times for commuters in this area, and it has essentially cut them in half. Uh, for comparison, if you live at the end of this gondola line, which we are nearing the end of, and you wanted to take a bus before this was here, it would take you about 35 minutes to reach the end of the line to the end of Metro Line 8. Today, riding the gondola, uh, that trip has been cut in half to 18 minutes. So a pretty major cut.

SPEAKER_03 12:36

Really significant. Also, if you were walking, it was around 30 plus minutes to get there. A bike even took you about 22 minutes to get to the station, so you're seeing major commute times, uh major cuts to the commute time.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Another piece of that too is a bus might have taken you 35 minutes, but when you factor in needing to wait for the bus in the first place, that time gets even better because there is always another gondola coming here. They're basically every 30 seconds, another one is rolling.

SPEAKER_03 13:02

Never wait on a gondola. Yeah, yeah. Another benefit to the gondola line versus trying to operate a bus route between these two points is that the gondola line in theory is cheaper to run. You have less personnel, less maintenance issues. Again, buses tend to break down not infrequently and require just extra maintenance. So far on the line, we've really seen attendance at the entrances to sort of help you if you need assistance getting on the line, but otherwise, nobody really at the exit. You know, you have an operator and that's really it.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Right. Yeah, you could have just one or two people at each station and you're you're more than good to go. So the operating costs are low.

SPEAKER_03 13:34

At this stop, you do have a little bit of a, I'm gonna say town center, but definitely some things that you would want to ride, the gondola to you have a little supermarket, a restaurant, and some other little uh what you'd consider like small village type stores. So yeah, just a really nice place to connect to the transit. There's also connectivity to buses. Oh, you missed a good opportunity. There are two buses. One, two buses. Count 'em. Oh, three buses. Wait for it. So you do have good connectivity to other modes of transit at each of these stops, as evidenced by this uh small little town center.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

All right, let's pop back on the gondola and go ride to the final stop. So we made it to the last stop on this new gondola line here in Paris. This is Villa Nova. Uh, the station area has some fairly like dense housing around it for being where we are. Like we are way out on the periphery, and there's quite a bit here still.

Costs Compared: US Vs Europe

SPEAKER_03 14:26

We were comparing this to the you know, equal distance that you would make in a US city and what the the urban landscape would look like. And honestly, this is just a lot more dense. Unlike American cities, when you're this far out of town, there are actual apartment buildings next to large green fields.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

Yeah, we literally it it doesn't it doesn't go like in the US, it would be like downtown area, some sort of middle rise, which is an area that we're kind of missing, and then it just goes to like single-family suburbs for as far as the eye can see. Here we have like eight-story buildings, and then it just goes rural, like right next to it.

SPEAKER_03 15:01

But one thing that we notice is that there's a lot of public transit out here in the suburbs. Um, not only do we have this amazing gondola now that we've ridden the whole length of, but also there's been a lot of buses uh at every gondola station. At our last stop, we saw a total of three buses go by within the same minute. So a lot of connectivity out here, and I think the density, even being in the more rural areas here, is really high and contributes to that public transit.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny, like you're saying in the more rural areas. I say rural, but you're kind of I mean it's rural, but all like it's urban right there. Yeah, like an urban thrill, like literally I could throw a rocket vault.

SPEAKER_03 15:38

We're looking at the cost of an urban gondola, and this is in US totals, we expect it to be somewhere between 10 and 40 million dollars per mile.

SPEAKER_02 15:45

That comes in significantly lower than other traditional modes, whether that be a heavy rail metro or a light rail metro, a streetcar. All of those are gonna cost in the hundreds of millions per mile.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

Yeah, light in the US is somewhere between 100 and 250 million dollars per mile. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

And then once you get into like heavy metro, elevated and underground, you're running into upwards of a billion dollars a mile in the US at this moment. Uh, as far as Europe goes, the numbers are a bit better. They are able to build a lot of these things for cheaper because they part of it is the know-how. They've they build them more frequently and all this sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 16:21

This particular gondola project came in at around$150 million, uh, which again, compared to most other options, a metro, uh above ground or underground is still gonna come in cheaper.

Global Context And Adoption

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Yeah, so to compare, uh, very early on, a heavy rail extension, uh a metro extension of line eight was one of the options, and it would have been about ten times as much money, and very quickly they ruled that out as an option. Here's David with more details about how a gondola was the perfect solution for this area.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

To go through all these infrastructures with a metro or with uh uh a bridge to ride buses was too expensive. And the the cabal car is interesting here because you you place your pylons and then you you can ride uh really easily. For the economy of uh building uh a subway, you need to have uh density. And in this uh area you you had people but not enough. So the also the gondola system is uh between strum and uh bus. So it was a perfect option.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

Ultimately, in the in the rock, paper, scissors game of of gondola, metro, bus, the gondola wins. Every kind. Yeah. We would both love to see more systems like this in the US. I think we've made that pretty clear on the show. I mean, our logo is a gondola. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

And elsewhere in the world too. I mean, like uh they I think that they are an underutilized tool.

SPEAKER_03 17:53

Yeah, 100%. I do think that Europe has a bit of an advantage here. The logistics of building a gondola system here is just simpler. The companies that really specialize in building these systems are based usually either here in France or in Switzerland. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Yeah, and I mean it is not to say that uh those same companies don't build systems in the US, because like we've mentioned a couple times in this, this these are the same companies that build the traillifts of ski resorts. Obviously, the United States has a plethora of ski resorts with gondolas and all sorts of different sorts of chairlifts, so it's not the best excuse. And I I think that it will require some creative thinking of leaders and transit officials in the United States as to where it makes sense, because it isn't a one-size-fits-all solution as much as I would love it to be, because I do think that this is one of my favorite ways of getting around. Like this was a very cool experience. Riding these in Colombia was a very cool experience. I would like to go ride them in other places, I think it's just a unique way to get around, but it isn't the like one size-fits-all solution for everything.

SPEAKER_03 18:52

No, but I do like that the solution is expanding. I mean, we've seen this in South America through Colombia, it is also in um La Paz and Bolivia. Uh, we've seen this in Mexico City. There is an enormous line that goes through part of Mexico City, and now we're seeing it here in Paris at Europe's longest urban cable car gondola system.

Final Takeaways And Patron Extras

SPEAKER_02 19:11

Yeah, and I do think that down the line, this will hopefully be something that folks can point to as a successful system, and it can help to inspire this sort of things in cities around the world.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

So we just finished our journey and we are back where we started at the end of the eight-line. Uh, overall, I thought that was a really awesome experience to be able to take the gondola all the way out to the edge of Paris.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

Absolutely. We've been kind of like talking about this as an idea for a while now when we found out that this project was going to be a thing, and then I was like, oh, I wanted to go in December, couldn't make it happen in December, and then you were able to make it out here for doing it here in January. So I'm really glad we got to experience it.

SPEAKER_03 19:50

I crossed an ocean for you guys.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

So overall, though, this was a really good application of this. I think the kind of terrain, both natural and man-made challenges make this a good choice. I think the population density of the areas makes it a good choice. I think the proximity to the downtown area makes it a good choice. I I really can't see any of the other modes that we discussed today, whether it be bus, light rail, or an extension of the metro, doing the job as well as the gondola has here.

SPEAKER_03 20:24

What's also really great about this gondola is that it operates from about 5.30 in the morning till midnight. So you do have pretty good connectivity throughout the entire day. And another benefit to a gondola that is different than a bus or a metro system, is that you don't really have to scale operations for like rush hour. You get the same frequencies throughout the entire day.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

Yeah, and you don't have to think about the schedule at all as a rider. You just show up and you know that another gondola will always be coming. Your weight is always going to be extremely short. I would imagine maybe you have a very short line during kind of rush hour at the end of the day when people are taking the metro back out uh from downtown Paris and wanting to get on the gondola here. So uh overall, really cool application of this. We would love to see this utilized in more places. Uh, Chris and I, I if you we haven't mentioned it in this episode, we kind of started this show as a joke a little bit of us talking about gondolas so much and that we wanted to see them more so in Austin. And now here we are out. This is this was like the most gondola-specific episode we've ever done. Yes. Uh, we have ridden other aerial transit on the show we did in Zurich uh a couple months back. Yep. Um, I guess that's it for on the show.

SPEAKER_03 21:31

So far on the show. We haven't done an episode that was all about the history of gondolas. We've also done uh an episode with Woosh to talk about the uh their gondola system they want to deploy. And so yeah. Special thanks to David, Chief of Project Architecture with Atelier, for uh speaking with us about the station designs. Totally. It really adds a lot to be able to talk to someone who actually worked on the project.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

If you want to see more from our interview with David, we posted a longer version of the interview to Patreon where you can support the show directly. While we were here, we also Did a full day doing Paris using only public transit. Pretty easy to navigate the city here. There's a lot of different options. So if you're interested in checking that out, it'll be coming in a couple weeks. It will be out early on Patreon as well. If you want to support the show, that is a good way to do so. We try to get you early episodes when we get them done. With all that being said, if you have not liked this video already, please consider doing so. It helps us out quite a bit. Leave a comment down below if you've got something like this that you want us to go check out again in the future. We're happy to go do so. I know I have a bunch of other random little transit things on the list of to try to hit in 2026. But without further ado, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your Transit Tangents Tuesday.