Getting people to experience systems like the Medellin Metrocable will be one of the cable industry's big challenges in the coming years. Image by gab.
There’s no nice way to say this, but here goes:
Had the Metrocables of Medellin and Venezuela been built in a place like Denver, Copenhagen or Zurich, this conversation about cable transit would be entirely different than it is now. Cities would be building these things faster than the industry could keep up.
We wouldn’t even need this site, to be completely honest.
One of the first things a planner, policy-maker or politician has to do before implementing any radical new idea is to witness it first hand. Similarly, a journalist needs to experience something up close to effectively comment upon it.
That first-person encounter with a new idea, technology or innovation can change people’s perception in an instant. When one sees, feels, touches and experiences something up-close and in-person, it is in that moment when a person’s mind can be changed.
In other words, for the right people to get cable transit they need to experience cable transit.
But that’s very, very difficult with world affairs such as they are:
- Given the constant strain between the Venezuelan and United States governments, no American politician (or American-friendly politician) is going to be caught dead traveling to Caracas to explore a transit system with an explicit socialist bent to it. Better luck getting them to visit Cuba.
- Algeria only recently emerged from a decade civil war that claimed tens of thousands of lives. Parts of the country are still ‘no-go’ zones. It’s also predominantly Muslim. That presents a problem in a post-9/11 world.
- Colombia has relapsed into violence and the U.S. State Department has issued an updated travel warning saying that violent crime is up in some major Colombian cities, including Medellín.
- Favelas targeted for Metrocables in Rio have erupted in violence, delaying openings. Even when the World Cup and Olympics finally arrive in Rio, how many upper-middle-class sports tourists will trek off-the-beaten path into the favelas just to witness a gondola?
Do any of these places look like desired destinations for city councillors, policy wonks, or transit administrators? Probably not.
Trouble is, these are the only four places where urban gondolas have truly been integrated into the local transit network. These are the four places that any planner or politician interested in cable needs to see.
But most likely they won’t. This is one of the biggest challenges the cable industry faces right now.
Yes, the industry has demonstrated that they deserve to be part of the public transit family, but they’ve not been able to leverage that demonstration on a global stage which primarily takes the form of American and Western European cities and media.
How the industry navigates this current challenge will likely determine cable transit’s future for a very long time to come.
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