Table Mountain Cable Way

The best views of Cape Town are from the top of Table Mountain.  The Cableway takes you to the summit in under ten minutes whilst the rotating cable cars ensure that visitors enjoy a 360º view of Cape Town and Table Bay. Once on top visitors can stroll along 2km of pathways and enjoy magnificent views from over 12 viewing sites and decks.

    * The Cableway has been in operation since 1929. It has a 100% safety record.
    * The cable cars were imported from Switzerland and there are only 2 other such cable cars in the world, one in Titlis in the Swiss Alps in Switzerland, and one in Palm Springs in America.
    * On windy days the water tank at the bottom of the cable car is filled with water to maintain ballast.
    * The floor of the cable car rotates, giving everyone a 360 degree view on the way up and down.
    * The cables of the Cableway weigh 18 tonnes.

Facilities at the top of the mountain:

    * Self service café
    * Gifts and curios from the ‘Shop at the Top’
    * Venues available for hire
    * Wheelchair friendly pathways
    * Free guided walks

Table Mountain Café offers a trendy menu that caters for the changing demands of the Cableway's visitors. Menu items include pizzas, gourmet burgers, and harvest rice bowls (meals of the day) that showcase traditional South African cuisine. A selection of pre-packed light meals are available from the gourmet deli. Meals may be complimented with a selection of fine wines. A wide variety of pastries, speciality teas and coffees are also on offer from the coffee bar.

Interesting Facts:

To date the Cableway has transported more than 19 million visitors to the summit (2010). 800 000 visitors from all over the world use the Cableway annually. Even with so many visitors, queuing time is minimal due to the upgraded system.

The 65 passenger cable car runs from Tafelberg Road to the top of Table Mountain. The floor rotates giving everyone a 360 degree view on the way up. The cable cars take about 5-10 minutes to reach the top of the mountain and they travel at a speed of up to 10 meters per second.

History of Table Mountain Aerial Cableway

Since the first person laid eyes on Table Mountain, it has exerted its powerful and charismatic pull, enchanting and drawing any and all who fall under its spell. Table Mountain’s magnetism has a way of drawing people in, compelling them to reach the summit. But getting to the top was not always the effortless trip it is today.

Before the Cableway was established, the only way up Cape Town’s iconic mountain was by foot – a climb undertaken only by adventurous souls.

One of these intrepid climbers was the famous Capetonian, Lady Anne Barnard. In 1790, upon hearing that no woman had made the climb, she mounted a small expedition, which included three “gentlemen”, several slaves and her personal maid. The group summitted via Platteklip Gorge and held a lavish picnic before descending.

By the late 1870s, several of Cape Town’s more prominent (and possibly less fit) citizens had suggested the introduction of a railway to the top. Plans to build a rack railway were proposed, but implementation was halted by the outbreak of the First Anglo-Boer War in 1880.

By 1912, driven by a desire to make access to the mountain top easier for citizens and visitors, the Cape Town City Council commissioned an engineer, HM Peter, to investigate the various options for a public transport system to the top.

Peter suggested that a funicular railway running from Oranjezicht through Platteklip Gorge would be the most viable solution. In a referendum on the matter, the vast majority of Cape Town’s residents voted in favour of the funicular – despite the staggering cost of £100 000 (an immense amount of money in those days).

However, the proposed plans were halted by war yet again – this time the First World War, which lasted from 1914 to 1918. As a British colony at the time, South Africa was embroiled in the conflict.

In 1926 a Norwegian engineer Trygve Stromsoe proposed the building of a cableway to the council.

The scheme caught the interest of a group of influential businessmen after Stromsoe approached Sir Alfred Hennessy and showed him a functioning scale model of his idea. Hennessy and fellow investors Sir David Graaff and Sir Ernest Oppenheimer formed the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company (TMACC) to finance construction, with Stromsoe taking the fourth seat on the board of directors.

A week after viewing the model, the company chose a site for the lower cable station and swiftly appointed a firm of local architects, Walgate & Elsworth, to design the upper and lower stations and a tearoom at the summit. The building of the Cableway was contracted to Germany’s Adolf Bleichert.

Construction got under way speedily. The work was dangerous and difficult, and builders relied on a temporary ropeway and an open box (“the soapbox”) to cart building materials and workers to the top of the mountain. Although this was a perilous method, no serious accidents occurred during construction. To this day, the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway has a proud history of being totally accident-free.

The Cableway, one of Cape Town’s first tourist attractions, was completed in two years at a cost of £60 000. On 4 October 1929, the Mayor of Cape Town, Reverend AJS Lewis, presided over the official opening ceremony, which was attended by more than 200 guests.

The earliest Cableway, while safe and efficient, was primitive by today’s standards. Nevertheless, it offered a safe way to ascend the mountain in under 10 minutes. The car, made of steel and wood, could carry 19 passengers and a conductor. Since the 1929 launch of the Cableway, more than 20-million people have taken the trip to the top in progressively improved cable cars.

The Cableway quickly became a landmark in Cape Town, conveying some of Cape Town’s most illustrious visitors, including King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II. During their official visit in 1947, the king, queen and their daughters, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, were met at the top of the mountain by 77-year-old Prime Minister Jan Smuts, an avid hiker, who had walked to the top. Smuts shared the cable car with the royal family for the return trip, arriving in time for a joint sitting of both houses of parliament.

Many other famous names have taken the ride, including Oprah Winfrey, Sting, Steffi Graf, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Margaret Thatcher, Prince Andrew, Michael Schumacher, Brooke Shields, Michael Buble, Tina Turner, Jackie Chan, Dolores O’Riordan, Skunk Anansie and Paul Oakenfold.

In 1958, the cable car was upgraded. The new cable car had a passenger capacity of 23 passengers, with one attendant operating the car. Fully loaded, it weighed approximately 3 tons.The new upgraded cable car had an auxiliary diesel powered engine in the upper station, designed to take over in the event of a power failure.

The second upgrade, in 1974, saw the introduction of lighter cable cars, each capable of carrying 28 people.Safety precautions were further improved with the introduction of the new cable cars in 1974. Weekly inspections carried out by skilled technicians involved hazardous duties on the roof of the moving cable car as it traveled up and down the line.

In 1993, Dennis Hennessy, the son of one of the founders of TMACC, sold the company. The new directors immediately set about planning an infrastructure upgrade. Apart from remodelling the restaurants and upgrading machinery, new cable cars were purchased.

Unlike their predecessors, the new cable cars, or Rotairs, have revolving floors that allow passengers a 360-degree view of the city and mountain as they glide up and down Table Mountain.

Work on the upgrade began in January 1997. For several months Table Mountain’s distinctive features were altered by the presence of cranes and the comings and goings of large helicopters carrying equipment and construction materials. The revamped Cableway was officially opened on 4 October 1997, the anniversary of the original launch almost 70 years previously.

For more than 80 years, the company has been committed to providing visitors with a memorable experience and to delivering outstanding service, while being passionate about preserving the natural environment of the World Heritage Site in which it operates.

Today the company is led by a board of directors and a qualified and committed management team under Chief Executive Officer Sabine Lehmann. The company has been acknowledged and received numerous achievement awards, most notably International Organization for Standardization (ISO) accreditation for its environmental management system.

The ISO is the world’s largest developer and publisher of international standards, which are implemented by more than 1-million organisations in 175 countries. The company achieved its ISO 14001 status in 2003 and again in 2009 – the only South African attraction operator to have received this accreditation.

 Your First Choice for Cape Town Accommodation and Guided Tours - Kapstadt Travel