Leitner: First Tricable Gondola Lift in Italy

The Ritten Cableway Rides Again

The new tricable gondola lift at Renon, the longest and also the first of its kind in Italy, will be able to present its qualifications this spring. The importance of the cableway as part of the public transportation network of Bolzano becomes obvious if the cableway and road distances are compared: Renon and Bolzano are 17 kilometers apart by road, but the total length of the cableway is only 4,543 meters. Travel by aeral tramway is thus substantially shorter than driving by car.

LEITNER, along with the construction company Seeste in the form of a temporarily amalgamated bidder company, was awarded the contract from the invitation for tenders on the part of the STA, the public transportation company of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano. The suggested form for the financing of the cable transport system was decisive: a public-private partnership (PPP) agreement.

The 3S system, the new pièce de résistance in LEITNER’s palette of systems, is the synthesis of the traditional bicable gondola lift and the technology of the double carrying cable that is sufficiently familiar from aerial tramways, which allows for the problem-free use of intermediate supports for the traction cable.
Two structural characteristics make the new 3S carriage clearly stand out compared to conventional constructions. Firstly, the transport through the stations takes place on special station rollers which make it possible to travel through very tight turning radii. Secondly, with new carriages, the traction cable is fed in through the side and is inserted into the grips from above. This design was chosen in order to make it possible to build the stations very compactly and yet to still hold the traction cable securely in the grips.

One special feature of the new facility at Ritten are the eight very spacious gondolas, each of which offers comfortable space for thirty-five passengers.

LEITNER has received a forty-year concession for the use of various spaces in the bottom station. Both this station and the top station were rebuilt from the ground up and have available 1,264 sq. m. for office space, 1,195 sq. m. for retail space, and 130 underground parking spaces. After forty years, those areas revert to the province.

Technical features
Tension station (Bottom) 273 m
Drive station (Top) 1,222 m. (4,009 ft.)
Vertical rise 948 m. (899 ft.)
Inclined length 4,543 m. (14,940 ft.)
Number of cabins 8
Persons per cabin 35
Operation speed 7 m/s (23 ft./s.)
Transport capacity 550 p/h
Power of the main drive 2 x 450 kW
Track rope 4 x 47 mm
Haul rope 40 mm
Evacuation rope 32 mm
Number of towers 7