Inauguration of Paris's first urban cable car linking it with the Ile-de-France region

Cabins began flying over the urban landscape of the south-eastern suburbs of Paris, on the occasion of the inauguration of the first urban cable car in the French capital region, which will shorten access to the metropolis from some of the banlieue municipalities, which are always subject to heavy and slow traffic, in the Ile-de-France. Line C1 in the suburb of Limeil-Brevannes was inaugurated on Saturday, in the presence of Valérie Pécresse, president of the Ile-de-France region, and the mayors of the towns served by the cable car.

The 4.5-kilometre route connects Créteil to Villeneuve-Saint-Georges and passes through Limeil-Brevannes and Valenton. The cable car will transport around 11,000 passengers per day in its 105 cabins, each capable of accommodating ten seated passengers. The total journey will take 18 minutes, including stops, compared to about 40 minutes by bus or car, connecting isolated neighbourhoods to line 8 of the Paris metro. The €138 million project was cheaper to build than a metro, officials said. 'An underground metro would never have seen the light of day because the budget of more than one billion euros could never have been financed,' said Gregoire de Lasteyrie, vice-president of the Ile-de-France regional council in charge of transport.

This is France's seventh urban cable car, with aerial cable cars already operating in cities such as Brest, Saint-Denis de La Reunion and Tolosa. Historically used to cross rugged mountainous terrain, these systems are increasingly being used to connect isolated neighbourhoods. The first French urban cable car was built in Grenoble, at the foot of the Alps, in 1934.