Are We Taking Off? A Critical Review of Urban Aerial Cable Cars as an Integrated Part of Sustainable Transport

The overall growth of the world’s population and urbanization lead to rethinking transport planning, further developing the conventional transport systems, and complementing new ones usefully, especially in urban environments. One way to cope with this challenge is to leave behind the already severely saturated urban land use model and move to the third dimension. This includes the use of urban aerial cable cars, which can complement conventional public transport in certain transport relations. Accordingly, this paper aims to answer how the recent, past, or planned implementations of urban aerial cable cars are assessed in the scientific literature, what open research questions need to be answered to enhance the success of transport systems, and what the chances are of cable cars becoming a standard part of transport planners’ repertoires. Following systematic literature review methods, 54 studies from different databases were identified and processed in a multi-stage procedure to provide transparent insight into the relevant literature. The results, especially concerning urban and transport integration, are discussed in detail, emphasizing that cable cars have already partially found their niche, but their role in the urban environment has not yet been sufficiently studied. In conclusion, the study’s originality fills the gap in providing a review of urban aerial cable cars from a transport planning perspective by systematically considering today’s globally available literature.