Drone installing cable long first section of the Sky Blue Line. Image from Mi Teleférico.
The Sky Blue gondola (Spanish: Línea Celeste) will be a critical interconnecting transit line in La Paz’s urban cable car network. This past weekend, ropeway specialists were busy at work as they installed the first section (861m) of the Sky Blue Line’s rope between San Jorge Station and Liberator Station.
Once the system is fully built, the 4-station line will unite the city’s South zone with the El Prado area. In turn, users will be able to transfer seamlessly to the White Line at San Jorge Station and to the Green Line and Yellow Line at Liberator Station. Specifically, connectivity at Liberator will be strengthened immensely as it will function as only the second station in the entire cable car network where users can directly transfer between three separate urban gondola lines.
Sky Blue Line. Image from Mi Teleférico.
Similar to the upcoming Purple Line, the Sky Blue Line is built with a maximum speed of 6 m/s (21.6km/h) and a maximum capacity of 4,000 persons per hour per direction. These specs are a noteworthy upgrade from existing gondola lines which have speeds of 5 m/s and directional capacities of 3,000 persons per hour. Effectively, these improvements will help decrease wait and travel times as cabin headways and spacing will be reduced to 9 seconds and 54m respectively.
While construction first kicked off in July 2017, the first section of the cable car (Liberator to San Jorge) is expected to open in early 2018. The remaining sections are scheduled to begin passenger service in mid-2018.