Dharamshala-McLeodganj Ropeway Now Operational, To Reduce Travel Time Between Tourist Hotspots To Just Five Minutes

The construction of an aerial ropeway project connecting the two tourist hotspots of Himachal Pradesh - Dharamshala and McLeodgunj - is complete and the ropeway is now operational.

The project was executed by Dharamshala Ropeway Limited, a company owned by Tata Realty and Infrastructure Ltd (TRIL). TRIL has a 76 per cent stake in the company.

The 1.8 kilometres monocable detachable ropeway project can carry 1000 passengers per hour per direction. The cost of one-way travel for one person is fixed at ₹ 300, and the two-way tariff is ₹ 500 per person.

Constructed at an estimated cost of about ₹ 207 crores, the Dharamsala-McLeodganj ropeway has two stations and 10 towers, and 18 gondolas (cabins). The top station is right in front of the Dalai Lama Temple in McLeodganj.

The ropeway was developed by deploying Monocable Detachable Ropeway system, an urban transport technology that has been widely adopted in Western countries of Europe, USA and Canada.

The ropeway reduces the distance between the two tourist spots by 9 kilometres and saves around 40 per cent of the travel time.

In 2015, TRIL emerged as the lowest bidder to develop the ropeway in a private-public partnership mode was with a concession period of 40 years.

Following the successful bid, TRIL was awarded the project. A Memorandum Of Understanding (MoU) for constructing the ropeway was signed between the Himachal Pradesh government and TRIL.

The Himachal Pradesh government agreed to construct multilevel parking near the take-off point of the ropeway in Dharamshala. The multilevel parking was funded under the Smart City Mission of the union government.

After securing in-principle clearances from the forest department for developing the ropeway project, TRIL began construction work in 2017.

The project faced a significant hurdle as state forest authorities delayed providing clearance for constructing multilevel parking on 0.72-hectare forest land for the Dharamsala-McLeodganj ropeway. The completion of the project was further delayed due to Covid-19 pandemic.

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