Toulouse: there was a cable car project in the 1930s
While carrying out research for the book he is releasing on Téléo, Francis Grass unearthed the story of a forgotten project: that of a cable car in Toulouse in the 1930s between the Ile du Ramier and Pech-David.
Toulouse residents are familiar with the Barcelona cable car, born in 1931, which connects the port to Montjuïc. And its twin brother in Grenoble, also a tourist cable car, built in 1934. But they are unaware that such a project existed in Toulouse in 1936. And, if we do not know what happened to this initiative, we can imagine that, if it hadn’t been for the war, there might be a cable car in Toulouse today between the Ile du Ramier and the summit of Pech-David.
From Ramier Island
This “scoop” was unearthed by Francis Grass, the Toulouse elected official in charge of culture, transport specialist, former president of Tisséo Ingénierie. This one has just been released by Privat editions “Téléo, an urban cable car in Toulouse”. And he looked at length at the history, already old, of this mode of transport in the world.
Through an engineer from Tisséo, he learned of the existence of this project, of which he found the whole file, plans included, in the municipal archives. It was the German company Bleichert, designer of the Barcelona and Grenoble cable cars, which submitted a project to Albert Bedouce, former mayor of Toulouse in 1906, elected socialist deputy, and then Minister of Public Works in the Blum government and still Toulouse city councilor . This involves linking the municipal sports park on Ramier Island to Pech-David. The file also contains three other routes: between Marengo and the hill of Jolimont, between the road to Narbonne and Pech-David, then from Saint-Agne station to Pech-David. The estimate was 1.8 million francs at the time, or €140 million, “equivalent to twice the forecast price of Téléo”, notes Francis Grass.