The Mérida Cable Car Tourist Transport System or simply Mérida Cable Car is a cable car system that operates in Venezuela. It is already in full operation. It is the highest and second longest cable car in the world for only 500 meters, but it is in the first place because it is the only one that combines so much height with so many kilometers in length. The Mérida cable car has 12.5 kilometers of route, reaching a height of 4,765 m.s.n.m, making it an engineering work that was traditionally unique in its type and with more than 50 years of history. It goes from the city of Mérida to the top of Espejo peak within the Sierra Nevada National Park in the Venezuelan Andes, specifically in the state of Mérida, Venezuela. It was closed in 2008 for its modernization and was reopened on April 29, 2016, in pre-commercial stage, to finally open to the public on October 7, 2016.1
The first Mérida cable car was planned in 1952 by a group of Venezuelan climbers called the Venezuelan Andean Club during the government of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, in order to build a system that would facilitate the ascent to the Sierra Nevada of Mérida. The proposal was taken into account and the survey was carried out in order to develop the project in 1955.
By 1956 the final route was drawn and for the following year the freight cable car was up and running until La Aguada station, which would serve as a transportation for the materials needed for the construction of the stations.
The cable car was mostly built with French, Swiss and German support. By 1958 it was built at 50%. The work was completed in March 1960 thanks to the support of Venezuelan labor and the foreign technical team led by the French specialist Maurice Comte. The work had a cost for the moment of its construction of 70,000,000 Bolivars that for the time amounted to about 16 million dollars.