White Line travelling along road median. Screenshot from Youtube (cul tumbres).
With the opening of the Purple Line, La Paz has completed all of its urban gondolas for 2018. In just one year, the city constructed three urban cable car lines — the White Line, Sky Blue Line and the Purple Line — with a total of 11 stations and 9.9km (6.15mi) of cable.
This meant that 2018 was the second busiest year for urban gondola construction since 10km (6.21mi) of ropeways initially opened in 2014 (Red Line, Yellow Line and Green Line). As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, the system is continuing to set new records as it delivered more than 318,500 passengers in one day.
Unfortunately, being able to experience the world’s largest urban gondola network remains elusive — especially for North Americans and Europeans — since there are no direct flights to La Paz from outside of South America.
Luckily, many users have uploaded videos of their journeys onboard the newest gondolas and readers have sent us some of the videos they’ve found online.
It’s obviously not the same as experiencing the ropeways in person, but it probably the closest we can get for now. For us, our favourite new system is the White Line especially as it travels along the median of Busch Avenue between Triangular Station and Villaroel Station. The experience of flying through a dense urban environment is almost unreal and one of the relatively untapped design solutions that should find more application in the future.
If you watch the videos, be sure to let us know what you’re favourite new system is in La Paz in the comment section below or find us on Facebook!