Mi Teleférico - The Subway in the Sky - Page 1 Operating at 13,000 ft above sea level, the world’s highest and longest cable car system, Mi Teleférico is taking La Paz’s public transit system to new heights. Opened in 2014, Mi Teleférico is providing transportation for 80,000 – 90,000 people per day within the city as well as transportation between La Paz and the neighboring city of El Alto, two cities that were long seen as social worlds apart (more on El Alto coming up). Mi Teleférico carries 3,000 people between the two cities every hour and the cable cars have cut commute times down from 1 hour to just 10 minutes. Other rides that would take hours by bus or jitney have been reduced to minutes. The fare is about 40 cents per ride.
The system presently has four lines and three more in the works. The stations are named in both Spanish and Aymara (Aymara is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over one million speakers). In order to save the environment and cut back on air pollution the cable car system has been designed to run on electricity, part of which is provided through solar power. It is also praised as a symbol of efforts to close the geographic and economic gap between Bolivia’s indigenous poor and “mestizo” middle class.
