Magnificent Mobility: Medellín's Cable Cars

(I wrote this post on March 29 and just realized on June 13 I never hit publish! )

I finally rode the most fun form of transportation.

And besides being one of the most fun, it’s also one of the most transformative types of transportation around.

I rode the cable car in Medellín, Colombia!

Maybe you know it as a gondola — but not the boat kind in Venice. And this is not the kind of gondola they use for ski resorts.

Transformative Transportation

In Medellín, it’s called the Metrocable and it’s an essential and integrated part of the public transportation system here.

It’s not just that the cable car is a fun form of transit, or that it’s beautiful to see the lush city below from above, but the Metrocable also provides efficient access for residents of neighborhoods that are challenging for buses or bikes or walking because they are on very steep hillsides.

Access to transportation options has the power to transform people’s lives.

Transportation is a Massive Part of Everyone’s Life

How we get around is such a huge part of everyone’s life that I don’t know HOW more people aren’t excited by making it more magnificent! Creative people need to get into this!

I’m obsessed with the idea that transportation can be and SHOULD BE spectacular.

And maybe even fun.

And maybe even a delightful part of life…

Why SHOULDN’T we bother making something that’s so central to life fabulous?!

Why should we waste our lives sitting in traffic when we could be using our ingenuity to make our days and our travels something to look forward to?

Soaring Above Traffic

So it was with a TON of excitement that I traveled from one part of this beautiful city of Medellín to another.

I transferred from the Metro to the Metrocable (metro-cahb-lay) and soared across and over the city.

I flew over traffic, above buses and trucks and cars and got an eyeful of gorgeousness along the way (and some unexpected horses as well).

Take a Ride with Me

Below you can see what I saw.

The cable cars have room for 8-10 people but I happened to score one all to myself so I recorded it with some rambling.

Cable Cars Every 8 Seconds

Even though I’d read about the cable cars and the way they’ve connected neighborhoods that are hard to access efficiently with other types of transportation, I was STUNNED by how regularly they operate.

They just kept coming and going — at about 8 seconds between the cable cars!

EIGHT SECONDS.

7.5 Cable Cars Per Minute

Cable cars departing every eight seconds means there are over 7 per minute.

As a comparison, a friend of mine just said she waited for OVER AN HOUR the other day for a bus to show up in that other city I adore, New Orleans.

That’s 3,600 seconds.

In that time, 450 cable cars would have traveled by her.

How do we accept this awful level of service and frequency?

Imagine what life could be like if you didn’t have to spend $10,000 a year on personal transportation and you had access to reliable and predictable public transportation?

People in the US — WHAT ARE WE DOING?

Perfect for Hills

Cable cars are not the solution for every transportation issue but they are PERFECT for some.

We (in the States) just need to be open to different things besides cars/trucks/SUVs and buses. Sure, there are subways/metros in a couple of cities and light rail in others but they’re not actually feasible in many places.

No Plowing

If you live in a hilly place that has snow, it can be a HUGE pain to get around in the winter.

But cable cars could be a spectacular solution.

Clear the cable and move right along.

No salt, no plows, no shoveling.

Just move right along.

No Wear & Tear and No Bus Bunching

Cable cars don’t get stuck in traffic because they are ABOVE traffic. (I know I’m really hammering that point home here!).

And unlike buses, trucks, SUVs, and cars, they’re not destroying the roads. There’s no need to employ people to repair what they’ve ruined — those people could be employed doing other things and our transportation can just keep moving, like our lives.

And there are no problems with that “bus bunching” you get sometimes when there’s a big gap between buses arriving and then a whole BUNCH of the same bus show up at the same time — which is frustrating and useless.

Time to Expand Our Thinking

Y’all, we need to expand our ideas about public transportation.

We need to eliminate the stigma that it’s something for “other people” or “those people” or that it’s something for people who can’t afford cars.

As I pointed out in a recent post, one-third of people in the United States are stranded and isolated being licensed drivers. It’s long past the time that we make transportation spectacular for people of all ages, mobilities, and desires.

Let’s do it, humans.

We’ve got some impressive brains to work with, why should we sit for another moment in traffic when we could be living our lives however we want?