This will be the new attraction of Paris 1:13
(CNN) --
Paris is already home to some of the world's most popular attractions, and the French capital may be about to get its first urban cable car.
Proposed plans for a new 4.5-kilometer-long aerial tramway connecting several suburbs in the southeast with the Paris metro are moving forward, with construction expected to begin this year.
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Scheduled to open in 2025, the "Cable 1" project will travel from the Parisian suburb of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges to the Pointe du Lac station in Creteil, in the Île-de-France region, in just 17 minutes, less than the half the time it takes to do this tour on a bus.
Renders
of the cable car line, led by architecture studio Atelier Schall, have just been released
, providing a closer look at the long-awaited project, which recently passed pre-construction feasibility studies.
Connecting to Paris
A rendering of Cable 1, a proposed new cable car system set to open in Paris in 2025. Courtesy of Île-de-France Mobilités
Cable 1 (C1) is priced at an estimated €132 million (around US$145 million) and is expected to serve around 11,000 people a day, with just 30 seconds between cabins at peak times.
Each cabin will have space for up to 10 passengers.
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While French cities such as Brest and Grenoble already have similar cable car systems, Cable 1 would be a first for Paris, if approved.
However, several other proposed cable cars are currently in various stages of development.
First proposed in 2008, Cable 1 was deemed necessary due to the mountainous terrain of Creteil, which also has a high-speed rail line and motorway, making alternative land travel systems less practical.
The Cable 1 project will travel from the Parisian suburb of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges to the Pointe du Lac station in Creteil, located in the Île-de-France region.
Courtesy Île-de-France Mobilités
To build the system, 33 white towers will be placed throughout the suburbs, designed to "blend harmoniously" into the landscape.
"Public transport in Île-de-France, the Île-de-France regions and the Department of Val-de-Marne decided in 2016 to add a new innovative tool for public transport solutions offering the residents of Île-de -France the first urban cable car line in the region on its network," says Laurent Probst, CEO of IDF Mobilites.
highly accessible
A rendering of the Bois Matar station in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, which would be one of five stops on the line if all goes according to plan.
Courtesy Île-de-France Mobilités
"The great proposal of the group led by Doppelmayr France will allow, in just over four years, more than 11,000 people a day to save a lot of time, [offer] a lot of comfort and perhaps dream a little in the mountains."
Cable 1 will serve five stops in total, Temps Durables and Emile Combes in Limeil-Brévannes, Emile Zola in Valenton and Bois Matar in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, with the terminus at Pointe du Lac in Créteil, located a short distance from the subway line.
8.
The 4.5-kilometre line will have the capacity to serve some 1,600 passengers per hour.
Courtesy Île-de-France Mobilités
Each station will be only one story high to ensure the system is "100% accessible" to passengers.
Paris is not the only European city to have a cable car system.
Last year, Amsterdam gave the green light for a 1.5-kilometer-long cable car that will travel across the IJ river, linking Amsterdam-West and Amsterdam-Noord when it is up and running in 2025.
In London, a cable car built across the River Thames has struggled to attract regular passengers since it opened in 2012, only managing to avoid draining the city's transport finances because of a lucrative sponsorship deal that is due to expire soon.
Top image credit: courtesy of Île-de-France Mobilités
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