May the 23rd, 2023 – Following months of delays, issues, closures and the like, the Sljeme cable car finally got up and running, promising to be one of the capital’s top attractions. The profitability of the cable car has now been called into question.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, last year, i.e. in the first year of it being in actual operation, the Sljeme cable car transported 356,417 passengers in total. When we realise and understand that one of the most expensive cable cars in all Europe was opened on February the 23rd of that year, and that it was closed for 52 days undergoing repairs or because of bad weather conditions, we arrive at a figure of 259 working days last year. This results in a figure of slightly more than 1376 passengers per day.
When these figures are put into context with the maximum hourly capacity of 1,500 passengers in 84 gondolas, it becomes clear why the Sljeme cable car, which carries a price of 537 million kuna without VAT, has long been labeled a megalomaniac project and a monument to the rule of the late mayor Milan Bandic and HDZ in Zagreb, writes tportal.
According to ZET data, the revenue of the Sljeme cable car in those 259 days stood at about one million euros, or 3,861 euros per day, while at the same time, the costs for the employees, without those for maintenance and energy, were all at the same level. Until the year 2034, the City of Zagreb will pay slightly less than six million euros for it from the budget. This amount refers to the capital cost of the Sljema cable car, and 50 percent of its operating costs will be allocated from the city budget itself.
It’s worth recalling that in the first two months of the Sljeme cable car’s operation, it wasn’t possible for people to transport bicycles, but after this possibility was introduced, more than 7,500 one-time tickets for bicycles have been sold to date. Considering the many requests, especially from downhill biking fans who love to cycle down Sljeme, from May the 6th, ZET introduced daily and annual tickets for cyclists.
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