Do you know that cable car plan? 4 North Holland cable cars that never came

“It’s fast, it’s floating and it’s an attraction and transport at the same time”, Tim den Boer summarizes the attraction of the cable car. And then, according to him, the municipalities go wild with all kinds of positive feasibility studies. “And that’s where it usually ends.”

De Boer was trained as an architect and urban planner and writes about these subjects in various magazines. On his own blog he collects plans of cable cars that never came, the counter is now at 107. Together with NH we have listed four cable cars that never came.

From the center to the Ikea

A cable car connection between the center of Zaandam and Zuiderhout, that was the idea of ​​Frans Wittenberg of the Inner City Management Foundation in 2013. The Zuiderhout business park in Zaandam-West was developing rapidly at that time, there was even an Ikea planned.

Good news for the Zaankanters, but also a threat to the carefully built center of Zaandam. The municipality even warned that there is a chance that entrepreneurs will leave the center if Zuiderhout becomes a success. The solution: a funicular between the two districts. In this way, the shopping public would easily cable from the bustling center to Ikea, and vice versa.

Ideal, or so it seemed. Because neither the cable car nor the Ikea ever came.

40,000 people straight through the dunes

Architect M. Meuleman saw the cable car as ‘the ideal means of recreation for the little man who would otherwise never get around to recreation.’ He suspected that many people did not go to Zandvoort because it would be difficult for them to get there over the narrow roads.

So in 1970 Meuleman developed a plan for the construction of a cable car from Heemstede station to the coast south of Zandvoort.

The state-of-the-art track would undulate through about seven kilometers of dune area and could transport 40,000 people a day. Meuleman had even bought a piece of land right next to Heemstede station for the construction of ‘his’ track. He just had to get the financing done. That never worked out.

The new South Pier in Velsen

Three hotels, 45 holiday bungalows, an indoor beach and a sports hall with space for two thousand spectators. This is how Velsen alderman Ockeloen envisioned the future of the Zuiderpier in IJmuiden. Further on, a parking garage would be built where all holidaymakers could park their cars. But how do you get from the parking garage to the 800 meters of recreational fun that the Zuiderpier has to offer?

Yes, with a cable car. Ockeloen’s plans, and therefore also the cable car, did not make it.

Floating to the restaurant

‘The North Holland seaside resort of Schoorl will get a different look’, can be read in the daily newspaper De Tijd on 16 May 1968.

For six years there has been talk of a plan for a restaurant in the Pirola valley that can only be reached by cable car. The 700 meter long course takes visitors over almost a kilometer of untouched forest and dune area and will end on one of the highest (fifty meters) dune tops. ‘In clear weather you will be able to see as far as Den Helder, Amsterdam and the reactor center at Petten’, can be read in De Tijd.

Despite the fact that a number of private individuals wanted to start construction in the spring of 1969, it never happened. In 1970, the city council did not agree with the plan, a new open-air swimming pool was more important to them.

Will the cable car in Amsterdam really come?

“I have to see it before I believe it,” says De Boer with a laugh about the plans for a cable car across the IJ. According to him, the plans usually fail because of the finances. “It often comes down to the fact that you cannot offer a ticket for a normal public transport price.”

De Boer therefore has a hard head when it comes to the Amsterdam plans. Where the costs were budgeted at 90 million a few years ago, you can now add 30 percent to that, according to him, because of the increased construction costs. “I can also imagine that local residents will complain about looking in and things like that,” says De Boer. “I estimate the chance of it being there at 10 percent.”