Another year has passed without the construction of the new Sljeme cable car being anywhere near completion. Actually, the works have not even started. Last year, one of the cabins of the future cable car was presented as part of the Zagreb Advent. The 2.1-metre-tall and 2-metre wide cabin, which was proudly shown at the time, has since been removed so it would not remind citizens about the broken promise of the cable car being completed by the end of 2018, reports Večernji List on January 3, 2019.
The opposition recently organised a fake “inauguration ceremony” to remind citizens about Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandić’s unfulfilled promise that the new cable car would be opened on 31 December. On the very same day, the mayor decided to announce instead that he has selected the GIP Pionir construction company to build the new cable car. It should cost 299.8 million kuna and be made in 15 months. The works are expected to start next month, provided there is no appeal against the mayor’s decision.
In the best-case scenario, the Sljeme cable car could be ready for users in mid-2020, if works do indeed start soon. The selected company is the same which, less than two years ago, won a 5.6 million kuna tender to remove 13 steel pillars of the old cable car, of between 7 and 40 metres in height. This is also the same company which worked on the “Bandić fountains,” and it also built a building in which Bandić lives.
The future cable car should have 84 ten-person cabins. The route to the top of the Sljeme mountain, four and a half kilometres long, will take 16 minutes. The upper station will be at the height of 1,030 metres. The new cabins will be larger, and the whole system will be faster than the old one which, after 44 years of use, stopped forever in 2007. That year, a severe engine malfunction occurred on the cable car. It was concluded that the whole system was obsolete and should be replaced by a new one.
At the time, almost 12 years ago, Milan Bandić, who has been the mayor more or less interrupted since 2000, announced that the new cable car would be ready “as soon as possible,” and the initial deadline was May 2009, with works starting “no later than” spring 2008.
It is now early 2019, and nothing has been done since.
More news on the Zagreb mayor can be found in our Politics section.
Translated from Večernji List (reported by Mateja Šobak).
