The Government should consider building cable cars to relieve congestion in Cork, a local journalist and “concerned citizen” has argued. 

The county already has one cable car that connects the Beara peninsula to Dursey Island - which has a human population in the single figures. So, could more cable cars be built in the Rebel County’s urban communities? 

On Moncrieff, journalist Katriona Devereau argued it could be just what Cork City needs.  

 “Paris opened its first urban cable car as part of its public transport system just before Christmas - it's 4.5 kilometres,” she explained. 

“It's called the C1 and it cost €138 million to build over a couple of years and it's connecting these isolated neighbourhoods that didn't have proper public transport links and is plugging them into the Metro.”

An artist's impression of a Cork Luas.

While the Government has thrown its support behind a Cork Luas, Ms Devereau said cable cars are much quicker and cheaper to build than railways. 

“They're following a trend kind of globally where cities like Mexico City and La Paz have built these very efficient urban cable car transport systems,” she added. 

“[They] are able to kind of overcome tricky geography and have a very small footprint and don't require huge land acquisitions to lay cables and are powered by electricity and kind of answer a lot of the problems that cities are facing, densely populated cities are facing.” 

Ms Devereau noted that congestion is a “huge problem” in Cork and will only get worse as new housing is built in the city. 

“Where are all the cars going to go?” she continued. 

“They're going to be plugged into the same roads that were already congested and we really need to start thinking about some alternative.”

Main image: A cable car on Dursey Island in Cork. Picture by: Alamy.com.