A cable car is the rare form of transport that is also the view. There is nothing between you and the drop but a floor and a length of steel rope, and on the longest lines that sensation lasts nearly half an hour. The fifteen rides below are the longest passenger cable cars on Earth, and a stranger group than you might expect: alongside the alpine icons sit two commuter lines over Mexico City, a crossing of open sea in Vietnam, and an Algerian télécabine climbing from a hot plain city into cedar forest. They are ranked by the total length of one continuous route — every section from bottom station to top, so a four-stage system counts as a single long ride and sprawling urban networks are left out — and each line has to be carrying passengers today. That costs the list its most famous name: Sweden's 13.6 km Norsjö ropeway, the longest ever built, is out of service and up for sale.
15 Longest Cable Cars in the World (2026)
The record The longest cable car in the world is the Mérida Cable Car, in Venezuela — 12.5 km (7.8 mi), line length. Source: Wikipedia (Mérida cable car). Verified .
Longest Cable Cars in the World The Ranking at a Glance
Fun Facts About the World’s Longest Cable Cars
- Six continents, fifteen cable cars. The list reaches South America, North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia — the only inhabited continent missing is Antarctica.
- The longest is also the highest. Mérida Cable Car finishes at Pico Espejo, 4,765 m up in the Venezuelan Andes, which no other cable car system comes near.
- Mexico City has more of them than any mountain range. Cablebús Line 2, Cablebús Line 1 and Mexicable Line 2 are all commuter lines in one metropolitan area, and all three make the top five.
- Vietnam is the record-breaking country. Hòn Thơm Cable Car, Fansipan Legend Cable Car and Ba Na Hills Cable Car between them hold Guinness records for the longest three-rope and longest single-track cable cars.
- Two lines are dead level. Tochal Telecabin and Skyrail Rainforest Cableway are both 7.5 km, so the ranking splits them on vertical gain — Tochal climbs well over 1,800 m, Skyrail a few hundred.
- The world’s longest is not the longest ever built. Sweden’s 13.6 km Norsjö ropeway still holds that title, but it is out of service and up for sale, so it does not qualify for a list of cable cars you can ride.
1. Mérida Cable Car
At 12.5 km the Mérida Cable Car is the longest cable car ride on the planet, and it is the highest as well — a combination nothing else comes close to. Four separate sections run in sequence out of the Venezuelan Andes city of Mérida, lifting passengers from a base station at 1,577 m to Pico Espejo at 4,765 m, a vertical gain of more than three thousand metres. It first carried passengers in 1960 and reopened as Mukumbarí in 2016 after a long rebuild.
The ride is less a journey than an ascent through climate zones: coffee-country hillsides give way to cloud forest, then to bare páramo, then to thin, cold air and glacial rock at the top. Cabins change at each station, so the trip breaks naturally into four acts. It is worth checking the system is running before you plan a trip around it — the mountain is hard on machinery, and the upper sections close for maintenance from time to time.
2. Cablebús Line 2
Cablebús Line 2 runs 10.56 km across the hills of Iztapalapa in eastern Mexico City, and Guinness World Records recognises it as the longest public-transit cable car route in the world. Seven stations link Constitución de 1917 to Santa Marta, and the line opened in August 2021 as ordinary transport infrastructure rather than a tourist attraction — a commuter route built to move up to 200,000 people a day.
That is exactly what makes it worth riding. The cabins float low over one of the densest urban districts in the Americas, close enough to read the rooftops: water tanks, laundry, football pitches painted onto concrete, murals commissioned along the corridor. A journey that once ground through traffic on the ground now runs uninterrupted above it, and the view is the sort of thing no observation deck sells.
3. Cablebús Line 1
The first of Mexico City's cable car lines covers 9.2 km between Indios Verdes and the hillside colonias of Cuautepec, in the north of the city. Cablebús Line 1 opened in July 2021, a few weeks before its longer sibling, and threads six stations up terrain that buses handle badly — steep, tightly built neighbourhoods where the road network was never designed for the population that arrived.
Ridden end to end it is one of the great views in Mexico City. The line climbs out of the Indios Verdes transport hub and swings out over an unbroken carpet of low houses, with the Sierra de Guadalupe rising on one side and, on a clear morning, the whole basin of the city stretching away behind. The stations sit in the middle of the neighbourhoods they serve, so it works as a street-level connector rather than a scenic add-on.
4. Bursa Uludağ Gondola
At 8.8 km the Bursa Uludağ Gondola is the longest cable car in Turkey and, when it opened at the end of 2013, the longest monocable gondola line in the world. It replaced an aerial tramway that had served the city since 1963, and it runs from Teferrüç on the southern edge of Bursa up through Kadıyayla and Sarıalan to the hotel area on Uludağ, climbing from around 236 m to roughly 1,810 m.
The mountain at the top is Turkey's best-known ski resort in winter and a cool escape from the Marmara heat in summer, which makes this a genuinely year-round line. The lower half is the surprise: the cabins rise straight out of a large working city and are over forest within minutes, with the Bursa plain — and, in clear weather, the sea beyond it — opening up behind you.
5. Mexicable Line 2
Mexicable Line 2 runs 8.25 km from Indios Verdes across the boundary into the State of Mexico, ending at Hank González in Ecatepec de Morelos. Seven stations carry it over one of the most heavily populated urban areas in the country, and it opened in March 2023 as an extension of a network that had already proved the idea on a shorter first line in the same municipality.
It is a working commuter route rather than a viewpoint, which is precisely its appeal for anyone curious about how cities actually use ropeways. The cabins pass low over rooftops, markets and schoolyards, connecting an outer suburb to Mexico City's transit network without touching a road. Ride it late in the afternoon and, on a clear day, the volcanoes on the valley's rim show up on the horizon.
6. Hòn Thơm Cable Car
The Hòn Thơm Cable Car crosses 7.9 km of open sea off the south coast of Phú Quốc, and it holds the Guinness World Record as the longest non-stop three-rope cable car in the world, set in January 2018. It leaves from An Thới at the island's southern tip and lands on Hòn Thơm — Pineapple Island — hopping over a scatter of smaller islands on the way.
There is nothing else on this list quite like the middle section. For minutes at a stretch the cabin hangs over nothing but water, with fishing boats directly below and the Gulf of Thailand in every direction, turquoise over the shallows and deep blue further out. The towers rise straight out of the sea, and on the return leg the sunset does most of the work.
7. Xuefeng Mountain Cableway
China's longest cableway opened in September 2025 and went straight to the top of the mountain-ropeway table: the Xuefeng Mountain Cableway climbs 7.6 km through the ranges of western Hunan, billed by the provincial government as the world's longest alpine cableway. It starts beside Xupu South high-speed railway station at about 280 m and finishes at 1,450 m in the Xuefeng Mountain scenic area.
Its real novelty is the connection it makes. A trip that took two to three hours on mountain roads now takes around twenty-three minutes, and because the bottom station sits alongside a bullet-train platform you can step off a high-speed service and into a cabin. The ride crosses deep valleys and terraced hillsides in Huayao country, one of the least-visited corners of Hunan.
8. Tochal Telecabin
At 7.5 km the Tochal Telecabin is in a dead heat with Skyrail, and we have put Tehran ahead on the tiebreak that matters most to a passenger: the climb. From its base at Velenjak on the northern edge of the city at around 1,900 m, the line rises to a top station at roughly 3,740 m in the Alborz mountains — a vertical gain of more than 1,800 m across seven stations on three connected lines.
It has been running since 1978, and it is best understood as Tehran's escape valve. The bottom station is in the city; a short ride later you are on a mountainside above the haze, with the capital laid out grey in the valley below. Locals treat the lower section as a hiking lift, riding one stage up and walking back down through the foothills.
9. Skyrail Rainforest Cableway
Level with Tochal at 7.5 km, the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway takes ninth on that tiebreak with far less height to climb — but nothing else here travels over terrain like this. It runs from Smithfield, just north of Cairns, to the village of Kuranda, floating a few metres above the canopy of Barron Gorge National Park in the Wet Tropics of Queensland, a World Heritage rainforest.
Two mid-stations, Red Peak and Barron Falls, let you get out and walk boardwalks through the forest and out to lookouts over the gorge and its waterfall. When it opened in 1995 it was the longest gondola cableway in the world. Ride it one way and take the historic railway back down through the gorge, which is how most people do the round trip.
10. Tianmen Mountain Cableway
For years the Tianmen Mountain Cableway was the answer to "what is the longest cable car in the world", and at 7.46 km it is still the longest single mountain ropeway most travellers will ever ride. Built by the French firm Poma and opened in 2005, it starts near Zhangjiajie railway station in Hunan and climbs 1,279 m to the summit of Tianmen Mountain.
The line is famous for its gradient — at its steepest it tilts to about 37 degrees — and for what waits at the top: cliff-edge walkways with glass-floored sections, and Tianmen Cave, a natural arch punched clean through the mountain with a long staircase climbing to it. Below, the road to the cave folds back on itself in a run of hairpins that the cabins pass directly over.
11. Blida–Chréa Cable Car
The Blida–Chréa Cable Car climbs 7.07 km in two sections from the city of Blida into the cedar forests of Chréa, and when it opened in 1984 it was the longest cable car in the world. The first section runs to an intermediate station at Beni Ali, the second on up to Chréa, high in the Blidean Atlas and inside a national park.
The contrast across half an hour is the whole point. You leave a hot, busy plain city and arrive in a mountain village where snow falls in winter and Algerians come up from the coast to escape the summer. The line was out of action for years during Algeria's civil conflict before being restored, and its small ten-person cabins have been making the climb again ever since.
12. Eiger Express
The Eiger Express covers 6.48 km from Grindelwald Terminal to Eigergletscher, and it is the fastest way anyone has yet devised to reach the foot of the Eiger's north face. Opened in December 2020, it is a tricable gondola — two track ropes and a haul rope, the configuration that keeps a cabin steady in high wind — and it makes the run in about fifteen minutes.
It does something no other cable car does: it flies you almost directly at the most storied wall in mountaineering. The north face fills the window for much of the ascent, and from the top station you can walk out onto the glacier terrace or transfer to the railway that tunnels up through the rock to the Jungfraujoch. In winter the same lift serves the Grindelwald ski slopes.
13. Fansipan Legend Cable Car
Running 6.3 km up from the Mường Hoa valley outside Sa Pa, the Fansipan Legend Cable Car holds two Guinness World Records: the longest non-stop three-rope cable car at the time it was built, and the greatest elevation difference achieved by one, 1,410 m between its two stations. It ends near the top of Fansipan, at 3,143 m the highest mountain in Vietnam and in mainland Southeast Asia.
What used to be a two-day trek is now a ride of about twenty minutes, which is either the best or the worst thing about it depending on your view of mountains. The cabins cross terraced rice fields and valley-floor villages before the forest closes in and cloud usually swallows everything; on the days it clears, the whole Hoàng Liên range appears at once.
14. Ba Na Hills Cable Car
The Ba Na Hills Cable Car above Da Nang took the Guinness record for the longest non-stop single-track cable car in 2013 at 5,801 m — 5.8 km in one unbroken run, with no intermediate station to break it up. It lifts passengers from the coastal lowlands into a hill resort that the French laid out as a hot-season retreat in the colonial era.
The ascent is a study in weather: humid green foothills at the bottom, then cloud, then a cool ridge that feels like a different country from the beach you left. Several separate lines now serve the resort at the top, home to the much-photographed Golden Bridge held up by two enormous stone hands. Go early if you can — the cloud tends to build through the day.
15. Wings of Tatev
Wings of Tatev spans 5,752 m — 5.75 km — across the Vorotan River gorge in southern Armenia, and it has held the Guinness record for the longest non-stop double-track cable car since 2010. Two cabins run in opposite directions on a reversible system, each carrying up to twenty-five people between the village of Halidzor and the far side of the gorge.
The destination justifies the engineering. Tatev Monastery is a ninth-century complex perched on a basalt promontory with a sheer drop on three sides, and it was once one of the great centres of learning in the medieval Armenian world. Before the cable car, reaching it meant a long switchbacking descent into the gorge and back out the other side; now the approach is a single glide over the void.
FAQ: The World's Longest Cable Cars
What is the longest cable car in the world?
The Mérida Cable Car in Venezuela, at 12.5 km. Four sections run in sequence from the city of Mérida to Pico Espejo at 4,765 m, which also makes it the highest cable car system in the world. It reopened in 2016 as Mukumbarí after a long reconstruction.
Why isn't Sweden's Norsjö ropeway ranked first?
Because this list only counts lines carrying passengers. The Norsjö ropeway is 13.6 km, a section of a former ore cableway converted for tourists in 1989, and it is the longest passenger ropeway ever built. It is currently out of service and the operation has been put up for sale.
Are these ranked by total route length or by a single unbroken span?
By total route length. Every section of one continuous line counts, from the bottom station to the top, which is why multi-stage systems rank highly. Sprawling multi-line urban networks are excluded, and so are freight ropeways, funiculars and the street cable cars of San Francisco.
What is the longest cable car over water?
The Hòn Thơm Cable Car off Phú Quốc in Vietnam, which crosses 7.9 km of the Gulf of Thailand between An Thới and Hòn Thơm. Guinness World Records lists it as the longest non-stop three-rope cable car in the world, a record it set in January 2018.
Which countries have the most of the world's longest cable cars?
Mexico and Vietnam, with three entries each, followed by China with two. The fifteen lines are spread across six continents, and the biggest surprise is how many are ordinary public transport: three of the top five are commuter routes rather than mountain or tourist rides.
Planning more of your trip? Keep exploring more world record-breakers.