Introduction

In everyday language, the term “aerial ropeway” refers to installations with large cabins that provide access to sites such as the “Aiguille du Midi” in Chamonix or “La Bastille” in Grenoble, or that provide access to the summits of ski areas at major winter sports resorts.

In regulatory terms, the term “aerial ropeway” refers to an installation where passengers are transported in vehicles suspended from one or more ropes. These include chairlifts, gondola lifts, funitels and reversible aerial ropeways and pulsed movement aerial ropeways, as opposed to ski-tows, where users keep their feet on the ground, or funicular railways, which are very similar to trains. In its regulatory sense, “aerial ropeway” as the term suggests, carries an aerial transport notion.

Technically, there are two main types of aerial ropeway technologies :

Monocable technology

The term monocable means that the same cable carries (1st function) and tows (2nd function) the vehicle suspended from it. This kind of cable is called a carrying-hauling rope. Chairlifts, almost all gondola lifts, funitels and a few pulsed movement or reversible aerial ropeways belong to this category, which accounts for 95% of the aerial ropeways used by skiers in ski areas around the world.

Bicable technology

The term bicable means that the two functions of carrying and towing are performed by two separate ropes. The rope that carries the vehicle is called the carrying rope, and the rope that tows the vehicle is called the hauling rope. Most reversible and pulsed movement aerial ropeways fall into this category, along with a few gondola lifts around the world.

These two technologies can be combined with two types of hauling or carrying-hauling rope movements:

• unidirectional cables: these cables move continuously in the same direction, either at a constant speed (continuous) or at a variable speed (discontinuous)
• reversible ropes between stations, where the speed of the rope is dictated by the position of the vehicles, which are permanently attached to the rope.

The combination of these parameters has led to the development of different types of installations, whose characteristics are described below: