Cities, SI Urban 1/2020, SI-Urban
MAJOR PROJEKT IN MEXICO CITY
Mexico City has a major problem: traffic. In the future, the new urban ropeway system from Austrian ropeway manufacturer DOPPELMAYR/GARAVENTA will combat this. Opening of the third transport level is scheduled for the start of 2021, after a construction period of only a year and a half.
Second place for Mexico City! – It is questionable whether the city would want to celebrate the fact, as the top position is for daily traffic congestion. According to Salzburg24, only Bangkok has longer congestion times. On average, a total of 219 hours (just over 9 days) are spent bumper- to-bumper in the Mexican capital.
The problem here is actually easy to explain: Mexico City is growing too quickly. More and more people are moving to the city, in search of work or a better life. This has resulted in the city merging with increasingly large parts of the surrounding area. Almost 21.6 million people therefore already live in Mexico’s largest city, at an average altitude of 2,310 metres above sea level.
The problems that arise from this relate not only to the daily waiting times in traffic but also to the resulting air quality; on many days in the year, the city disappears under a dome of smog. Now, a number of projects are aiming to help improve quality of life for the city.
One of these projects is the planned urban ropeway from DOPPELMAYR/GARAVENTA. The installation of nine kilometres of ropeway route by the start of 2021 should relieve traffic in the north of the city and thus make it easier for residents to breathe.
In the north of Mexico City, the district of Cuautepec is home to around 3.5 million people. To connect to the underground railway and trans- regional bus system, residents of this district generally take local buses or travel by private transport, which results in a high volume of traffic on the roads.
Indios Verdes station is one of the principal transport hubs for this: the local bus system and three underground lines meet here. Because of the importance of this connection for the people from the region, it has been decided to open up a further dimension for transport: from the start of 2021, a 9.22-kilometre route will offer an urban ropeway.
With this measure, it is anticipated that private transport can be significantly reduced, as a journey in the planned DOPPELMAYR/GARAVENTA ropeway would save people up to 40 minutes. The direct connection between the district of Cuautepec and the transport hub at Indios Verdes will have six stations and be fully integrated into the existing public transport network.
For DOPPELMAYR/GARAVENTA, this order is a new milestone for ropeways as a transport solution in the city. As the general contractor, the ropeway specialist will be responsible for turnkey implementation of the project and make an important contribution to sustainable and environmentally friendly mobility in Mexico City.
The public transport is used by almost 800 million passengers per year; on peak days, up to 5.5 million people travel by bus, underground etc. – and by ropeway from the start of 2021.
