Original source: This article is an except from the just launched book The Place Economy Volume 3. To learn more about the book, go to hoyne.com.au.
Using cable cars and escalators for commuter transport has transformed a once blighted mountain city in Colombia.
When Colombia’s first cable car line was envisioned for the city of Medellin in the early 2000s, the project was roundly criticised by academics and urbanists alike – including “people like me”, recalls prominent architect Jorge Perez Jaramillo. “We just thought it wouldn’t be successful”, he says, based on “the data, the number of passengers and many other details (that) were not clear to us”.
In hindsight, Jaramillo says he and his fellow naysayers had failed to anticipate how the two-kilometre cable car line running up one of the city’s steep hills would create urban transformation around the project stations, and more broadly, around the transit system.
When it opened in 2004, Medellin Metrocable Line K was the world’s first cable car system built for public transit, rather than for skiers or sightseers.
Another defining feature of the project was that it connected some of the poorest, most isolated barrios (districts) to the Medellin Metro and downtown area. Among the newly connected
neighbourhoods was Santo Domingo, which had been drug lord Pablo Escobar’s home base, and was considered one of the most dangerous places to live in Latin America.
With Line K’s opening, commuting times to the downtown area from the hillside communities were dramatically reduced, from two to three hours on a circuitous, multi-transfer bus ride to just 30-45 minutes via cable car, when used in tandem with Medellin Metro Line A, the rail line that bisects the city.
The vastly improved commuting times also made teachers, social service professionals and other community support workers more predisposed to venture into these previously
disconnected neighbourhoods.
In effect, the cable car line became a lifeline for these hillside barrios. Since the opening of Line K, with its four stops and 93 gondolas, another five cable car lines have been added to the Medellin Metrocable system, including the newest Line P, which opened in 2021, and comprises four stops and 138 gondolas over 2700 metres. The story of how these lines have improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of the poorest and most isolated communities in this city of 2.5 million has garnered worldwide attention and praise, including in major media outlets.
On closer inspection, Medellin’s visionary cable car system provides an even bigger, more important story: how, since 1995, when the country’s first (and to this day, the only) railbased
metro line opened, Medellin has created an integrated multi-modal transit system that puts most cities in the developed world to shame. The system links two metro lines not only
with the cable cars, but a tram line, a bus rapid transit system, secondary bus routes and, in partnership with other public operators, a complimentary outdoor escalator line and a free bike sharing initiative.
The subtext to this compelling story is that Medellin Metro (the umbrella
organisation for the city’s transit services) is helping to bring about positive social change that is improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of residents – both through direct interventions and by supporting numerous other community initiatives that have sprung up throughout the city.
In the words of Jaramillo, who from 2012 to 2015 served as the city’s director of planning and helped to oversee ongoing transit improvements, Medellin Metro has become “not only a transportation system,” but an organisation providing “infrastructure for accessibility and inclusion”.
Inclusion and Access
Before the new transit era, the city’s most vulnerable residents “didn’t feel part of the city… they used to say I’m going to Medellin, meaning I’m going downtown,” says Ana Mercedes Lozano Celis, of Metro Medellin’s Department of Social Management. The journey was certainly arduous and time consuming. Celis says some people had to get up as early as 3am to get into the city by 8am. And with two or more tickets required each way, the cost was prohibitive for many.
Now the journey takes much less time and requires just one ticket, which can also be used to access all of Metro Medellin’s transit lines within a 90-minute period. “Now they’ve stopped saying ‘I’m going to Medellin’ and just say, ‘I’m going downtown’.” The delivery of cost-effective, convenient transit isn’t the only reason for this new-found sense of inclusion.
A myriad of educational, cultural and recreational programs developed by Metro Medellin and others to serve the communities in and around the transit system have added to the mindset. One example is the Amigos Metro program, which offers training in art, culture and sports in dedicated rooms at several stations. Other initiatives include the Metro School of Leaders, which promotes community leadership skills.
There’s also a digital literacy program to help participants improve their employability, and the Metro Culture Apprentices program to help high school graduates get jobs. Around 800 students have been benefiting from this training annually, and to date more than 80,000 residents have participated in the programs.
In poorer neighbourhoods where public space is often scarce, Celis says the metro station rooms are also used for community events and activities including exercise classes, concerts staged in partnership with local musicians, and exhibitions showcasing the work of local artists. Metro Medellin also collaborates with neighbourhood muralists and graffiti artists whose work now adorns many metro stations and nearby walls.
All these activities tie in with the overarching goal of cultivating a stronger sense of community, trust and inclusion. “They may not even use the [transit] system, but as our neighbours they will become our allies,” Celis says – helping to protect the system and the affected barrios as a whole.
From Waste Dump Tourist Magnet
Although not quite the poster children for public transit that the cables car lines have become,
Medellin’s metro lines A (comprising 21 stations over 25.8 kilometres) and B (seven stations over 5.5 kilometres) together can handle about 60,000 passengers at a time – far more than
the likes of Line K, which maxes out at 3000 riders.
The two lines have significantly reduced commuting times – even for residents of wealthier neighbourhoods; which, because of their higher concentration of cars, suffer more from gridlock and poorer air quality than less affluent parts of the city.
The metro also serves disadvantaged barrios like Moravia, a densely populated shanty town that in the 1970s was home to a huge waste dump that residents picked through for
food, clothing and items they could sell. For decades it was also a stomping
ground for drug gangs.
Between 2004 and 2011, thanks to the area’s first urban development plan, the landfill site was remarkably transformed into a public garden and greenhouse, with additional public space set aside for a health centre, a linear park, a football pitch and a cultural centre. There’s also a
greenhouse run by a women’s collective that grows flowers to sell at markets across the city. In summary, there has been a 180-degree shift from a community people avoided at any cost, to one that’s now a much safer, healthier place to live.
Angela Holguin Ramirez and her sister Cielo Maria Holguin, who grew up in Moravia, have witnessed the transition first-hand. Their business, Moravia Tours, has a strong focus on giving back to the community, tied to a philosophy characterised by Ramirez as “transformation through tourism”.
“Our tours focus on the history of the transformation and the building of peace in a neighbourhood that previously was known because of the violence,” says Ramirez. “We take people to what was once a city dump and show them the biggest municipal garden in the country (now known as Moravia Garden).”
The two-hour walking tour, which begins at the Caribe metro station adjacent to Moravia Garden, provides ample opportunity for participants to interact with hillside neighbourhood locals through activities ranging from dance lessons and gastronomic experiences to planting workshops.
The tour concludes at the Universidad station (which means it is effectively book-ended by two metro stations). Moravia Tours says it pours 10 per cent of its profits back into community initiatives. Another spillover benefit occurs when tourists form an emotional bond with the area, and end up supporting local projects.
Some visitors have ended up staying on for long periods. “A tourist from Germany fell in love with the neighbourhood and stayed for three months doing volunteer work teaching the children photography,” Ramirez recalls. They later staged an exhibition in the nearby cultural centre, showcasing the new-found photographic skills of the kids.
Replacing Crime with Culture
In 1992, long before the Metroplus bus rapid transit line intersected the community of Manrique, the artistic corporation of El Balcon de los Artistas (In the Balcony of Artists) was established to promote a love of dance, as well as to provide a compelling alternative to the life of crime many kids in the area were living.
In place of assassin schools that drug gangs ran for local teens (and sometimes younger children), El Balcon’s Latin dance school helped show these children and their families that a different way of life was possible.
“It was borne out of the necessity to change the dynamics of the neighbourhood,” says El Balcon communications officer, Daniel Posada. Those taking part, he says, were able to experience “transformation through the power of art and culture”.
When the group started out, Posada recalls, “they put out two chairs… one on each side of the street (to block off the road) because we had no other place to run classes.” From an initial turnout of 49 girls and one boy, the number of students quickly grew to more than 100. Back then, however, it wasn’t safe to travel between the neighbourhoods of rival gangs at night.
“Sometimes we had 100 to 120 kids that had to sleep over with friends or classmates, until it was safe to cross through those borders the next day.” The turning point for the group was its participation in a nationwide dance competition. Despite coming from what was essentially viewed as a backwater for dances like the salsa, the group won first prize and went on to win numerous other competitions, including one in Los Angeles contested by 500 groups.
Working with families that struggle to buy food, let alone shoes and uniforms for competitions, El Balcon is now an economic engine, raising money via dance shows, lessons and tours, that have taken lead performers as far away as Europe and China.
Thanks to the community’s Metroplus bus connection, residents and tourists have easy access to the community for shows or to take lessons. The regular and dependable bus service also means students from all over the city can now come to learn.
“In the past that wouldn’t be possible because we didn’t have the transportation,” says Posada. The group also leverages the Metroplus connection, together with the rest of the Medellin Metro system, to stage performances in other parts of the city. “We now have big companies, public and private companies, that want us to put on shows,” Posada says. “So we’re combining the social part, and teaching dancing, but also making money to survive.”
Smart Steps
Like Medellin’s cable car network, Comuna 13’s outdoor escalator system is an innovative transit solution that has also become a major attraction for visitors ranging from curious tourists to academics. Situated in another barrio plagued in the past by the drug trade and gangland violence, the 384-metre-long escalator system comprises six sections and climbs the equivalent of 28 stories up the side of the mountain.
Previously, it took pedestrians about an hour and a half to traverse the circuitous streets and jumbled network of stairs to get from Comuna 13 to the downtown area. Now with the escalators, it’s a 15-20 minute trip.
The novelty of the escalators in tandem with the stunning streetscapes of Comuna 13 inspired the creation of a travel company, Color Tours, by a group of local social and cultural leaders. Like the founders of Moravia Tours, the people behind Color Tours viewed their enterprise more as a vehicle for social change than a travel company, building bridges between locals and other Medellin neighbourhoods – as well as with visitors from other parts of the country and the world.
Spokesperson Alejandro Echeverri says Color Tours is not a normal tour operator because “we’re from Comuna 13” and because the company enables visitors to “live the history of the transformation” of the area. The company takes visitors into some of the less glamorous neighbourhoods to show how people live, and to showcase the work of local businesses and artists, including the area’s colourful murals.
Echeverri says getting tourists to walk the normal stairs before riding the escalators is an integral part of the experience, providing an appreciation of how locals once had to navigate the steep hills by stairs as part of daily life.
An important parallel between the Comuna 13 escalators and Medellin’s cable cars is that the increased traffic generated by both has led to the surrounding barrios becoming much safer, with new schools, libraries, and hospitals.
And there have been big economic and cultural spin-offs for the locals, too. Color Tours owns a house in Comuna 13 that it uses to showcase locally-produced wares ranging from t-shirts and caps to candles and art works. The building also houses an informal school run by locals.
Echeverri says the positive economic impact of the escalators and groups like Color Tours on Comuna 13 has meant many more local people now earn enough income to live “day by day”. But while the area has also become a safer place to live “we still have a lot of different problems. We don’t have the violence, but we still have [challenges with] hunger, jobs and [lack of ] education.”
Smart Tourism
Medellin’s successful development of cable car and escalator transit systems underpins what the city has dubbed its Smart Tourism Destination initiative. Sandra Howard Taylor, executive director of Bureau Medellin, says the initiative is designed to make the city more viable both for residents and visitors. She sees the city’s multi-modal transit system as a foundation on which to forge “a deep connection between the infrastructure and the community”, showcasing
everything from the city’s street art and local food to conservation efforts, while helping to generate tourism dollars using sustainable practices.
To help maintain such positive growth, Jorge Perez Jaramillo says Medellin must not forget the mobility strategy created in 2014 during his stint as chief city planner that included “an inverted pyramid to transportation that prioritised non-motorist modes… both pedestrians and bikes, then public transportation. Then logistics and in the end, private cars.”
To that end, Jaramillo says the plan calls for the city to build 400 kilometres of protected bike lanes and 175 kilometres of improved pedestrian walking lanes that will intersect with the transit system “so that you connect to all of the modes”.
But Jaramillo feels local government authorities have been slow to act on the vision. “The continuity hasn’t been as strong as has been needed,” he says. One of the consequences has been reduced air quality due to the increased use of private cars. A parallel issue, he says, is the city’s failure so far to build a proposed new metro line. But in light of Medellin’s success in overcoming so many other obstacles in the past, Jaramillo remains hopeful that the slowdown is only temporary.
