Mexico City gets lift

Cable cars speed commute for thousands

ECATEPEC DE MORELOS, Mexico -- Coasting above Mexico City's infernal congestion is normally a prerogative of the well-heeled, who take helicopters or pay to use the upper deck of two-tier highways to avoid the chaos below.

In October, however, thousands of residents of this ragged industrial suburb began getting to work or school in brightly colored pods that glide along the city's first commuter cable-car route.

The Mexicable, a seven-stop line that runs just over 3 miles through a furrow of poor hillside neighborhoods, is part of a growing constellation of cable cars around Latin America that link marginalized communities to their cities' metropolitan hearts.

In Ecatepec, the largest and most dangerous municipality in the 21 million-strong expanse of greater Mexico City, the Mexicable has meant new visitors, shorter commutes, a burst of street art and a new sense of inclusion in city life, residents said.

"It's great," said Marco Antonio Gonzalez, who used to spend an hour in a cramped bus to get from his home in San Andres de la Canada, the Mexicable's final stop, to his job at a warehouse in the center of Ecatepec. He now has a smooth, 17-minute cable ride over dun-colored rooftops, half-bald soccer pitches and narrow streets strung with glittery bunting.

The new transport system has made him proud. "People never build something as impressive as this in a neighborhood like ours," he said.

Ecatepec stretches north from the tip of the capital's subway network into steep hills where square cinder-block houses are stacked like Lego pieces. Many who use the cable car also catch a bus and then a subway to reach jobs -- at restaurants, homes, offices or construction sites -- in more affluent parts of town.

Nancy Montoya, a housekeeper who lives in Esperanza, near the sixth Mexicable stop, said she saved about two hours per day using the new system -- time she spends doing homework with her children or buying groceries.

Her commute is also less frightening. Montoya, 36, has been robbed on buses so often that she has lost count, a complaint heard repeatedly from residents.

"You would just sit there, waiting for them to board," she said of the thieves.

Nowadays, she looks down on the lines of combis, or microbuses, from her aerial commute.

"I imagine they're still robbing people," she said, "but it doesn't affect me."

Over the past 12 years, gondola systems have been built in cities that include Cali and Medellin in Colombia; Caracas, Venezuela; La Paz, Bolivia; and Rio de Janeiro. There are plans to build systems in half a dozen other Latin American cities, according to the Gondola Project, which tracks cable car programs worldwide.

Medellin's cable car system, which began operating in 2004, has helped revitalize some of the city's most troubled neighborhoods, part of a renewal that includes gardens, a museum and a library. In La Paz, the system, which opened in 2014, has bridged communities divided by race and social status.

Such successes have inflated expectations of the transformative power of cable cars, and some experts worry that they are becoming a political gimmick.

Julio Davila, a professor of urban policy and international development at University College London who has studied cable car projects in Colombia, said the social benefit of linking poor communities to the economic life of a city could not be quantified.

"You can't use traditional cost-benefit analysis," he said. "So long as the poor are given access and feel included in the city, that's what matters."

In Ecatepec, the Mexicable project has helped spur a smattering of urban progress, residents said. The municipal government has installed new streetlamps and paved some roads.

Along the route, the government has painted facades bright pink, green and mauve and commissioned about 50 huge murals: a gaping shark's mouth on one rooftop; a portrait of Frida Kahlo by New York graffiti artist Alec Monopoly; a cartoonish elephant sculpted by Oaxacan artist Fernando Andriacci; a smiling girl whose face wraps around one of the concrete Mexicable stations.

But residents were skeptical that efforts at beautification would cause the kind of renaissance that Medellin has seen.

Nelli Huerta, a homemaker who was waiting for a bus in Tablas del Pozo, about halfway up the Mexicable route, with her 10-year-old daughter, said she had used the cable car a few times but preferred to travel on solid ground. Looking up as the dangling pods passed overhead, she said the government should have spent the money on basic services instead.

"How many people in San Andres have no water? No electricity? No paved roads?" she said. The murals that line the Mexicable route are pretty, she said, as are the newly painted houses. But, she added, "They're just disguising the problem."

Mexicans took to social media to mock the project when it first opened, noting that fake grass was used to temporarily cover a scrubby soccer field, and sharpshooters were posted on rooftops when President Enrique Pena Nieto inaugurated the cable car in October.

Joel Hernandez, who works for Movement for a Life With Dignity, a leftist community organization, said the government should have spent the money on teachers and schools, a less exciting cause that he said would have more far-reaching effects on his community.

"Face-lifts are not a priority," he said. "But you can really change things with education."

Some residents pointed out that, outside the morning and evening commutes, many cabins were empty or held only two passengers. Paul Abed, Mexicable's director, said the system was carrying an average of 18,000 passengers a day and hoped to reach 30,000. Other municipalities that form part of the Mexico City area, including Naucalpan and Ixtapaluca, were looking into building gondola systems, he said.

Fernando Paez, director of integrated transport systems at the World Resources Institute in Mexico City, said the success of the Mexicable would rest on plans to connect it to a bus rapid transit system that, in turn, would connect it to the subway. At the moment, passengers have to transfer to a temporary bus service.

"It will solve the transport problems of a population," he said. "But it needs to be connected to the metro."

For now, just being connected to the center of Ecatepec is a nice change, some residents said. And, for the first time, visitors from around Mexico City have come to take a look at their neighborhood. Nearly a quarter of a million people -- many from outside the municipality -- used the system during the first week when it was free and a novelty.

Blanca Estela Rosas, who uses the Mexicable each day to bring lunch from her home in San Andres to her husband's workshop in Tablas del Pozo, was amazed to see people visiting her community.

"We thought these things were for pretty places with mountains," she said of the cable car system.

"There are no pretty views here," she added. "But now we're on the map."

SundayMonday on 01/01/2017

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