A council is scrapping its cable car despite spending £2.3m on it as well as £50,000 a year in maintenance. Blaenau Gwent council has decided to scrap the cableway which links the old Ebbw Vale steelworks and Ebbw Vale town centre after canvassing opinion from residents.
The car will officially stop operating on April 28. Blaenau Gwent council has said the move has been made in a bid to plug a £6.6m funding shortfall. The car has long been a bone of contention in the area, deemed by many as a money pit. WalesOnline reported in 2019 that in the four years it had been operating to that point the cableway had been out of action more than 250 times.
Paid for through £12m European grant funding in 2015 the lift – which can carry 22 people at a time and descends 140ft – was initially used to link the town with new schools and leisure facilities on the former steelworks site. The council said it “faces some well-publicised financial pressures” off the back of the pandemic, rising inflation, and high energy and fuel costs. Explaining the council’s decision a spokesman said: “A series of savings proposals, financial efficiencies, and income-generating projects were put together and all of these were outlined to residents and stakeholders in an online survey and at face-to-face engagement events. Within this survey 60% of residents said the closure of the cableway was very acceptable, acceptable, or were neutral.”
The Welsh Conservatives have branded it a “costly and unreliable service”. Shadow transport minister Natasha Asghar MS said: "Many people questioned the point of the lift in the first place and we now know that is has proven to be a costly and unreliable service. There is concern now that the cable car site will just remain empty and unused becoming a centre for vandalism and anti-social behaviour."
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