Madagascar's $173 Million Cable Car Ran for Weeks. Now It Hangs Empty.

Cables strung above Madagascar's capital now carry nothing. The cable car system built to lift commuters over Antananarivo's notorious traffic ran for only a few weeks before shutting down, leaving what may be a $170 million mistake in one of the world's poorest countries.

The system was promoted and inaugurated by former President Andry Rajoelina, who was deposed in a military coup late last year following youth-led protests alleging widespread government failures. It was built over three years for about $173 million, financed with loans from France.

Rajoelina argued the cable cars were the best way to end reliance on aging, overcrowded minibus taxis that create traffic jams lasting hours. Light rail, he said, would not work because of the area's marshlands.

"Antananarivo was built for 300,000 inhabitants. Now there are three million of us," Rajoelina said when the system was unveiled in 2024. He compared its opening last year to France building the Eiffel Tower.

Officials said the cable cars could carry up to 75,000 people a day, take 2,000 vehicles off the roads and cut commutes from as long as three hours to roughly 10 to 30 minutes, depending on the route.

Few residents followed the president and prime minister aboard. Fares were set at 70 to 90 cents a trip — six to eight times the cost of a minibus ride — in a country where the average monthly salary for a commuter is about $72, according to a 2022 World Bank report. Poverty affects roughly 75% of Madagascar's 30 million people.

Pieter Onderwater, a public transport planning consultant and guest lecturer at the Center for Transport Studies at the University of Cape Town, said the government and the French developers may have misjudged priorities. "Obviously people will not use it because money is far more key than time," he said. "The price is six times higher than a conventional (minibus) taxi? Well then, we just sit in traffic because we know better things to do with that money."

Residents who had long complained about shortages of water and electricity questioned why those problems were not addressed first. Power outages repeatedly halted the cable cars.

"In a city where they cannot even fix the roads, how can we trust being more than 20 meters (65 feet) above the ground when there is a power cut?" said Erica, an Antananarivo shop owner who gave only her first name. "And if something goes wrong, how long would it take them to fix it?"

Some stations were burned or damaged during the coup. A transitional government led by coup leader and former army colonel Michael Randrianirina took over in October and has not announced any plan for the system; it did not respond to questions. A consortium that built the network inspected it in March and submitted findings to Madagascar's authorities "to decide on the next steps," one of the French companies involved told The Associated Press.

Antananarivo's population has grown more than tenfold since the 1960s. Africa's urban population of 700 million is expected to double by 2050, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, even as the continent has some of the world's least developed public transport systems, according to the research institution Transport Africa.

Hery Ratsimbazafy, an office worker, said the cable cars do not reach the city center. "It doesn't help me get where I need to go," he said.