Toulouse residents lined up this weekend to take the new urban cable car that connects the hospital-university sites in the south of the Pink City.
It is the longest in France.
On Friday, its inauguration brought together three mayors: Philippe Douste-Blazy (LR) who launched the idea in 2006, his socialist successor Pierre Cohen, who carried out the preliminary draft, and the current mayor Jean-Luc Moudenc (LR ), who had it built while this project had left him skeptical at the start.
Built by the world leader Poma in Voreppe (Isère) with Bouygues TP and Systra, "Téléo" crosses the hill of Pech David and the Garonne to connect the university of sciences and medicine Paul-Sabatier, the Rangueil hospital, on the a hundred meter high hill and, below, the Oncopôle research and care campus, built on the site of the former AZF chemical plant.
The whole unites 15,000 jobs, 30,000 students and more than 300,000 consultations per year.
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The urban cable car, a mode of transport that is on the rise
The 3 kilometer journey between the three sites is covered in ten minutes, whereas it takes half an hour by car when the ring road is congested.
The 15 large 34-seat cabins designed by the Italian Pininfarina move smoothly and silently thanks to the three-cable system.
This more stable technique made it possible to set up only five large pylons instead of twenty for a monocable, to fly higher and to operate up to a wind of 108 km/hour, which only happens for two and a half hours. per year on average.
It offers a panoramic view of the agglomeration and the wooded area around the Garonne going down towards the Oncopôle.
8,000 passengers per day
“
The cable car connects three strategic sites for the metropolis which must work together but which were separated by an incredible addition of cuts: the Garonne, the hill, the ring road…
, underlined Jean-Luc Moudenc.
Toulouse was innovative (…)
.
We want concrete ecology: the 100% electric cable car pollutes 30 times less than vehicles.
The Toulouse conurbation public transport union, Tisséo, expects 8,000 passengers per day to be used by Téléo, which can transport 1,500 people an hour in each direction.
"
There are 5,000 professionals at the Rangueil hospital, 65% of whom come by car
," says Jean-François Lefebvre, director general of the Toulouse University Hospital.
However, 55% of them indicated that they were ready to change their mode of transport!
»
We want concrete ecology: the 100% electric cable car pollutes 30 times less than vehicles
Jean-Luc Moudenc, mayor (LR) of Toulouse
Connected to line B of the metro and to the bus network, it could be extended later to form a southern transversal.
It is part of the plan to invest 3.8 billion euros in public transport in the conurbation, including 2.7 billion for the third metro line started at the end of the year.
First valued at 66 million euros, Téléo cost 82.4 million with the displacement of the Bellevue high school station, which did not want it, and even a little more with the health crisis.
"
It's the cost of two Lineo bus lines, it's not excessive
," argues Jean-Michel Lattes, president of Tisséo.
Urban cable cars are developing, even if the project in western Lyon was abandoned on May 10 by Sytral Mobilités in the face of opposition from the population.
After the opening of the first in Brest in 2016, by the Swiss Bartholet, which experienced breakdowns, the French Poma opened the Saint-Denis de la Réunion cable car last March and will build those in Grenoble and Ajaccio in by 2024. The Île-de-France transport union has ordered one between Créteil and Villeneuve-Saint-Georges (Val-de-Marne) from the Austrian Doppelmayr, and the metropolises of Nice and Bordeaux have launched calls for applications.