Tag: cable car

• The longest cable car line in the world is in Mexico City

  Mexico City is all kinds of big. It is the largest metropolitan area in North America, the largest Spanish-speaking city, and broadly one of the largest megacities in the world. Because of this, it can be, you know, hard to move around.

  I remember visiting the city for the first time when I was in elementary school, and it standing out to me that everyone had one day of the week when they were simply not allowed to drive their car. It was/is a form of load balancing. Imagine that. (I don’t know if this is still the case, or if it’s even more stringent today.)

  I also remember visiting the city later on, when I was in grad school, and it standing out to me that their metro had women-only cars. This was and continues to be an attempt to try and minimize the amount of sexual harassment that takes place on transit. Again, it can be hard to move around Mexico City.

  The city’s latest solution is one that has found success in other Latin American cities, such as Medellin, and that is: cable cars. Relative to subway or light rail, they’re inexpensive. They’re also good at navigating steep terrain, and their stations can be inserted into dense urban areas. This includes working-class neighborhoods who might otherwise have very limited mobility options.

  For reasons like these, Mexico City has spent the last three years building three new cable car lines, the most recent of which opened just last month. The city now has the longest cable car line in the world. But more importantly, it has a new transit add-on that is moving up to 80,000 people per day.

  This isn’t as much as rail. But that’s okay. The point of these lines is to bring more people closer in so that they can then connect to more services and other mobility options. And to do it quickly. Three new lines in three years is impressive. And from the sounds of it, it has transformed many people’s lives for the better.

  Here are maps of the 3 lines, zoomed out a bit so that you can see how they fit into the city’s broader urban context:

  

  

  

  2024.10.21

• Medellín wins 2016 Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize

  

  Thanks to my friend Darren Davis, I just recently learned about something called The Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize.

  Named after Singapore’s first Prime Minister, the prize is a biennial award that honors cities who have made, “outstanding achievements and contributions to the creation of liveable, vibrant and sustainable urban communities around the world.” Along with the prize comes $300,000 (Singapore Dollars), which is about $287,000 Canadian as of today.

  The 2016 Prize Laureate is Medellín, Colombia.

  Over the past two decades, the city has transformed itself from one of the most dangerous cities in the world to one that has become a model for social inclusion and urban innovation. Here is a video that talks about the transformation. It’s a bit cheesy, but it does provide a high-level overview of their urban initiatives. A lot of them will serve as a reminder about the importance of urban connectivity.

  If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may also remember that my good friend Alex Feldman (VP at U3 Advisors) wrote a guest post about Medellín after he visited the city for the World Urban Forum almost two years ago. That post was called, What cities could learn from Medellín.

  It’s worth mentioning that the runners-up for this year’s World City Prize were Auckland, Sydney, Toronto, and Vienna. In the case of Toronto, our “far-from-ideal transit” was specifically called out as a negative. Thankfully we are now working on road pricing, which will provide additional funding for transit. 😉

  Image by Jorge Gobbi

  2016.03.19