Like many other Western municipalities (see urban gondola map), German cities may be on the cusp of a great urban gondola boom.
News reports indicate that cable cars are now being discussed in municipalities such as Bonn, Wuppertal, Siegen, Trier, Frankfurt and Mannheim. In fact, Berlin will see its gondola built by LEITNER Ropeways open in time for IGA 2017.
View over Bonn/Bad Godesberg from Venusberg, Bonn.
Specifically in Bonn (pop: 315,000, located on banks of Rhine, 30km south of Cologne Cable Car), there seems to be great public support and enthusiasm for the concept of an urban gondola.
There’s so much interest that the former capital of Germany began a feasibility study in February.
Since analyses are ongoing, full details have yet to be released. However, based on some information gathered online, it suggests that the City is studying a 3S/TDG system, with 35-person cabins and a line capacity of up to 5,000 ppphd.
Based on one netizen’s interpretation of the plan, the cable car will travel along 3-4 stations in Venusberg (a municipality in Bonn that’s located west of Rhine and on a 176m plateau).
Another proposed route appears to be a east-west connection which links up Venusberg (west of Rhine) to Ennert (east of Rhine) with stations at Museum Mile (Museumsmeile), UN-Campus and T-Mobile headquarters.
The study is expected to be complete by year’s end with project costs estimated at US$115-170 million (€100-150 million).
Whatever alignment is chosen and finalized, observers would be wise to keep track of the developments in Bonn and within other European cities. If any of these projects are successfully implemented, it may very open up the floodgates for many more cable cars.