Today was the official opening of the Brest cableway. The opening was delayed when a load of demonstrating firemen turned off the power - just failing to maroon a load of journalists. How French is that?
There's some
video and other stuff (in English) here:
It has two 60-person cars, running on separate fixed cables, with a single double-looped traction cable. It's a recent type with two widely-spaced cables for each car so it hardly sways. What is new is that one pair is wider apart than the other, so they can be nested at the two stations (the cars dock at the same height) but are grade separated where they cross near the single supporting tower. Sneaky, huh?
Brest is an odd place, with a huge naval dockyard occupying the centre of town including the river (Penfeld) banks. They have a high-level bridge, and a narrow elevating one (though it's strong enough for trams). Inside the dockyard there is what must be a retracting floating bridge. They used to have a transporter bridge - but inside the dockyard, as is the floating one (but with public access).
You could see the new thingumybridge as a grade-sparated transporter (
transborbeur) - that would make as much sense as the most of the alternative names. The terminology of transport that dangles off wires is horribly confusing - this is an aerial tram in American, but a big cablecar to us. In French it's a télépherique, but in this case its makers (Bartholet) call it a
saut-de-mouton a cable (cable flyover or overpass).
That term
saut de mouton obviously only applies to the height separation for passing, and was used for railway grade separated crossings, and transferred to roads. Just to confuse,
saute-mouton means leapfrog, though it's the origin of the other form. France has loads of these railway "leap-sheeps" where the rule of the road changes between left and right. That happens for both
LGV▸ and older main lines at the network borders of France, but most are at the border with Alcace-Lorraine.
Whatever it's called, the locals are claiming it as the first urban one in France. Presumably the one in Grenoble is only half urban, its other end being up a small mountain. However, isn't Grenoble itself halfway up a mountain? The Americans have two urban aerial trams (in New York and Portland), and there are others elsewhere. London's Emirates Air-Line is one, though more conventional, and is unlike the American and Brest ones in having separate (not through) ticketing.
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