DOPPELMAYR Garaventa Group, an Austrian-Swiss company, will undertake the pre-feasibility study For an Aerial Ropeway Transit (ART) project for Cebu.
In a statement to SunStar Cebu, Fortunato Sanchez Jr., president of Socor Construction Corp., said that in his private capacity, he will back the pre-feasibility study efforts of Doppelmayr for the ART, commonly known as cable cars.
Sanchez said he will assist the private firm in coordinating with local government units in looking for prospective investors and obtaining traffic data.
“Doppelmayr promoted ART in 2014 in Cebu, meeting its political leaders to explain the system. On Sept. 11-14, 2015, it had an exhibit booth in the EASTS Transportation Conference held in Cebu at Radisson Blu. EASTS is a conference of transportation experts and systems from 19 countries in Eastern Asia. Doppelmayr failed to convince the Cebu stakeholders, except a few such as myself,” he said.
According to its website, Doppelmayr is a technology and market leader in ropeway engineering, which operates production plants including sales and service centers in over 40 countries.
The company manufactures chairlifts, cable cars, gondolas, surface tows for ski and amusement parks, as well as urban people movers and material handling systems and has built more than 14,900 installations for customers in 95 nations.
Doppelmayr already installed ART in La Paz, Bolivia and several other installations in other countries.
Sanchez, who used to be the chairman of the subcommittee of Infrastructure and Utilities of the Metro Cebu Development and Coordinating Board, presented the proposed 20-km. ART during the Regional Development Council 7 fourth quarter full council meeting.
Sanchez said that the ART is an ideal mode of mass transport in Cebu since it can complement the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and Light Rail Transit (LRT) systems. It has a passenger capacity of 4,000 per hour per direction, or equivalent to 200 jeepneys per hour.
Each cabin, which can carry up to 10 passengers, will run 22 kilometers per hour. The 20-kilometer line will traverse the cities of Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu.
Each kilometer of ART will cost between $20 million and $30 million. RVC