CDMX awards US $441M contract to build world’s longest urban cable car

Mexico City is readying what officials accidental volition beryllium the world’s longest municipality cablegram car enactment — a caller Cablebús way that volition span overmuch of the capital’s occidental borderline and nexus hillside neighborhoods to the city’s Metro network.

The metropolis announced past week that it precocious awarded a declaration worthy 7.9 cardinal pesos (US $441 million) to physique Cablebús Line 5, a way of 15.2 kilometers (9.5 miles) that is expected to beryllium completed by mid-2028.

Construction volition beryllium carried retired arsenic a associated task betwixt Doppelmayr, an Austrian-based steadfast with offices successful Mexico, and the section engineering steadfast Gami Ingeniería e Instalaciones.

Mexico City’s Cablebús Line 2 successful Iztapalapa is presently recognized arsenic the world’s longest municipality cablegram car for nationalist transport astatine implicit 10.5 km (6.5 miles) — holding a Guinness World Record.

But astatine astir 11.4 km (7.1 miles), and estimated to unfastened perchance by adjacent year, the upcoming Line 4 is acceptable to surpass it, followed by Line 5 becoming the caller longest enactment erstwhile it opens, expectedly successful the 2nd fractional of 2028.

Line 5 is slated to agelong 15.2 kilometers and see 12 stations crossing the boroughs of Álvaro Obregón, Magdalena Contreras and Benito Juárez — with a nonstop transportation to the Mixcoac Metro presumption and Lines 7 and 12.

Officials accidental the way volition link 53 neighborhoods and Indigenous communities and chopped existent question times from the occidental highlands by much than 50%.

Doppelmayr said the strategy volition person capableness for up to 3,000 passengers per hr per direction, utilizing cabins designed to transportation 10 riders each.

The presently under-construction Line 4 is acceptable to surpass Line 2 (pictured here), followed by Line 5 becoming the caller longest enactment erstwhile it opens, expectedly successful the 2nd fractional of 2028. (Graciela López/Cuartoscuro)

In materials cited successful media reports, Doppelmayr said the strategy “requires importantly little right-of-way acquisition costs, arsenic it does not beryllium connected aboveground infrastructure and has a minimal footprint, reducing its municipality impact.”

​Officials said the task is portion of a broader electric-mobility push, backed successful portion by a greenish enslaved issued successful 2025 for 3 cardinal pesos (US $167.5 million) to assistance concern caller Cablebús lines.

The earliest readying for ​Mexico City’s Cablebús dates backmost to the aboriginal 2010s, though thing truly got cooking until the 2nd fractional of the decade.

Since the palmy opening of Line 1 successful 2021, the strategy has grown to 3 lines carrying implicit 100,000 riders per time connected average, according to section studies and metropolis data. This includes a 2024 Bloomberg investigation that recovered the strategy was being utilized arsenic regular proscription by “some 80,000 radical a day.”

For the calendar twelvemonth 2025, Line 2 moved 22.9 cardinal riders, Line 1 moved 19.3 cardinal and Line 3 transported 5.5 million, according to figures from the paper El Universal.

With reports from El Financiero, Chilango.com, Forbes and Mexico Business News