Algiers Telepherique El-Madania. Creative Commons image by Poudou99.
As we declared last week, this week is going to be dedicated to unravelling some of the mystery surrounding Algeria’s rapidly expanding Urban Gondola plans. Algerian cities have many topographical challenges and it appears that the government has renewed it’s interest in ropeway technology as a means to combat those challenges.
The challenge for us, however, is to untangle the huge amount of information that exists about these systems and put them into some kind of clear order. Not easy considering the level of development in Algeria; the lack of easy-to-access information flowing out of the country; and the language barriers that exist.
Thus far, we understand that after the current spurt of planning, rehabilitation and construction of urban gondolas that is occurring throughout the country, Algeria will be left with a total of 23 ropeway systems.
These systems will be spread across 13 different cities in the following manner:
- Algiers: 9 total systems (5 in use, 2 under construction, 2 planned)
- Constantine: 3 total systems (1 in use, 2 planned)
- Tlemcen: 1 total system (in use)
- Oran: 1 total system (in use)
- Annaba: 1 total system (in use)
- Skikda: 1 total system (in use)
- Chrea: 1 total system (in use)
- Tizi Ouzou: 1 planned system
- Bejaia: 1 planned system
- Mediea: 1 planned system
- Beni Saf: 1 planned system
- Taref: 1 planned system
- Jijel: 1 planned system
For a developing world country of only ~ 35M people, this is a fascinating phenomenon. Our original understanding was that the epicenter of urban gondolas was South America.
But if the above plans be true and realized, then it should be clear that Algeria is the place to look to for inspiration.