Classroom lesson · La Paz Cable Cars · 🇧🇴 Bolivia

La Paz Cable Cars

The world's longest urban cable car network

Photo · Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

La Paz, Bolivia's biggest city, is built inside a deep bowl in the mountains. Getting from the bottom of the city to the top used to take a very long time by bus. Now La Paz has the world's longest urban cable car system — called the Mi Teleférico — and you can glide above the rooftops with an incredible view of the whole city.

Tell me more

La Paz sits at about 3,600 metres above sea level, making it one of the highest capital cities in the world. The city is built in layers — wealthier areas are lower down where the air is a bit warmer, and other neighbourhoods climb up the steep hillsides. The cable cars connect all these different parts of the city together.

The Mi Teleférico (which means 'my cable car') opened in 2014 and has kept growing. There are now ten different coloured lines — red, yellow, green, blue, orange, purple, silver, sky blue, white and brown — stretching across the city. From the cable car you can look down on markets, football pitches, and rooftop gardens.

On a clear day, passengers on the cable cars can see the snowy peak of Mount Illimani rising above the city. It is 6,438 metres tall and is covered in ice all year round. Many people in La Paz say looking at Illimani from the cable car is one of the best views in South America.

The cable cars are not just for tourists — locals use them every day to get to school, work and market. They are cheap, quick and much better for the environment than cars stuck in traffic. Cities around the world are now looking at La Paz and thinking about building their own aerial transport systems.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01La Paz built cable cars instead of more roads. What are the advantages of travelling above the city instead of through it?
  2. 02If your town had a cable car, where would you want it to go?
  3. 03Why do you think wealthier areas in La Paz are lower down, when in most countries the opposite is true?
Try this

Classroom activity

Draw a cross-section of La Paz going from bottom to top. Show the different layers — market, houses, school, cable car stations. Then draw a cable car connecting two points. Label what you would see from the window.