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Teleférico do Alemão is a gondola lift service that operated from 2011 to 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The city is known for its favelas, or informal neighborhoods built around the hilly geography of the city. Because of the informal construction of these neighborhoods, it is hard to operate public transportation such as buses due to the narrow, winding streets.
The Teleferico do Alemão was located in a group of various favelas known as Complexo do Alemão, in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro.
For another map of a different cable car system in South America, see Mi Teleférico in La Paz, Bolivia!
See the interactive Google Map at the bottom of the post!
Three key facts about this map
When it opened, Teleferico do Alemão was the first aerial mass transit system in Brazil
The gondola service operated at six stations and connected with the train system at the Bonsucesso station, allowing favela residents to transit to all parts of the city. There were 152 gondolas that operated the 2.1 mile route (about 15 minutes total from end-to-end), transporting about 9,000 passengers per day. During operation, the system brought a significant number of tourists to the Complexo do Alemão favelas.
The gondola has been discontinued due to lack of funding from the government
Shortly after the 2016 Olympics, the gondola was shuttered because the government could not pay for operating costs. This is in large part due to the financial crisis that Brazil faced in the late-2010s – the government’s reason for closing the gondola service was to divert limited funds to pay civil servant salaries.
The closure of Teleferico do Alemão caused an outcry for residents who blamed the government for spending more than US$70 million on a “vanity project” instead of essential services like sewage and trash collection for the favela neighborhood. The gondola construction also removed 2,000 people from their homes, only for the service to be terminated 5 years after opening.
There was another gondola service traversing above a different favela that closed in 2016 as well
Teleférico da Providência was another gondola service operating above the favela of Providência, also in Rio de Janeiro. The service was open for 2 years (2014 to 2016) and closed shortly after the ending of the Olympic games for similar reasons to Teleférico do Alemão – lack of state funding.
Additional links and sources
- Outlining the reasons for the 2016 halt of operations (link, published in 2016)
- Longer-term impacts of the now-defunct gondola (link, published in 2019)
- Interviews with current residents of Complexo do Alemão (link, published in 2017)
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