In 1996, a Colorado ski town opened a free gondola as public transit; nearly 30 years later, it still carries about 3 million riders a year between two towns

Most gondolas are there to take skiers up a mountain. However, one in Colorado does something different: it moves people between two towns throughout the day, for free. A 2016 study published in the Journal of Public Transportation actually lists this system, linking Telluride and Mountain Village, as one of those rare cases where the gondola actually functions as a real transportation system and not just a ski lift.

A lift built for skiers becomes a lifeline for two towns

The gondola opened its doors on November 19, 1996. It wasn't built for a joy ride. The system is run by the Town of Mountain Village, which said the goal was to reduce car traffic and to keep the mountain air clear during the expansion of the ski resort and Mountain Village. Riders reach an elevation of 10,540 feet above sea level and glide through the pine trees with views of the San Juan Mountains all around them. The town says the gondola logs nearly 3 million trips per year and over 67 million since the program's inception. That’s a lot of people who did not have to pay any fare, find parking, or be stuck in traffic.

The numbers behind offering three million free rides a year

There are a few details that explain why the system works so well. The trip from Telluride to Mountain Village is only 3 miles by gondola, but by road it's 8 miles. The cabins run at about 11 miles an hour, and one of the cabins covered more than 58,000 miles every year. The gondola runs seven days a week, from 6:30 a.m. to midnight, for about 287 days a year, closing each spring and fall for scheduled maintenance. About half of the cars allow pets on board, while some others accommodate passengers using wheelchairs. A separate lift, the chondola, provides another free route between Mountain Village and the Meadows neighborhood during winter. The town has also figured out what it would take to move the same crowd by road. It would need 21 buses to be operated simultaneously, carrying 1,070 passengers per hour, which is a whole lot more vehicles and a lot more exhaust squeezed into two small mountain towns.

Researchers are starting to take gondolas seriously

Outside of Telluride, most American cities still regard aerial gondolas as a novelty. In a 2024 Journal of Public Transportation paper, the performance of these systems in the real world, after they are integrated into a transit network, was discussed, finding that the capacity of a gondola to move riders per hour is restricted by the design of the station and passenger queuing. Simply put, the tech works, but a city needs to plan its stations well if it wants a gondola to carry real commuter traffic, not just tourists.

This research helps explain why gondolas are attracting renewed attention. Aerial cable cars are already used in cities such as Medellín, Colombia, and several German metro areas to carry commuters over hills and rivers that are hard for buses and trains to cross. Telluride and Mountain Village are an example of what that looks like when the system is free and has been operating on a full scale for decades, not just a short pilot.

Free transit boosts ridership, but it's not a cure-all

A 2025 study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon and Harvard reported that giving low-income households free transit fares increased ridership by 43% and shifted trips away from private vehicles. Also, a 2024 Journal of Public Transportation study, ‘Does fare-free transit increase labor-force participation and reduce income inequality?,’ reviewed fare-free transit policy across the US and found that dropping fares significantly increases ridership. The same research also showed that free fares do not increase employment opportunities or decrease income disparity in small and medium-sized cities. So free rides can help people get around, but on their own, they don't move the needle on employment or income inequality in the small and mid-sized cities the study examined.

Why this old idea feels new again

For those concerned with climate-friendly travel, a free, low-emissions gondola that has carried tens of millions of passengers since the 1990s is a notable example. It's not fancy, and it's certainly not new. It's just a gondola that shows up on time, for free, almost every single day of the year.