Rio De Janeiro's Urban Gondolas: New Public Transit Line Makes Debut

[ocpagu]

The latest, most innovative form of public transit in Rio de Janeiro has made its high-flying 2011 debut. As Wired is reporting, a six-station gondola line running above a collection of favelas , or shanty towns, known as the Complexo do Alemao opened in March and carries an estimated 30,000 people a day along a 2.1-mile route over the embattled neighborhood.



As these stunning images attest, the new $74 million urban gondola line has transformed what used to be a hour-and-a-half trudge into a 16-minute, theme park-style sky ride. The project is just one of the city's massive construction projects planned in anticipation of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Read more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/01/rio-de-janeiro-urban-gondola-transit_n_944786.html#s346073
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/st_riogondola/

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Quite an important initiative to bring the State to the favelas of Rio. It'll benefit lots of people too. Citizens of favelas usually take a long time to go from their neighborhood to their jobs downtown. It'll save them useful time. The idea is not original though, if I'm not mistaken, Medellín did it first.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Saving the people who live there 5/6ths of the time they used to have to invest just going anywhere.

Beautiful gift of times and energy given back to those who really need it.

Hope to hear more about this in the next year.

This step forward will pay for itself over and over immediately.

Thanks for the information, ocpagu.