Photos: Georgia’s cable car network is for the daredevil commuter
Updated On Sep 18, 2018 12:19 PM IST
The Georgian city of Chiatura with about 20,000 people is wedged between steep mountains that hold valuable deposits of manganese and iron. Since the 1800s miners from settlements at the bottom of the valleys would scale to various mining sites uphill, daily. This incredibly time consuming commute gave way to cable cars in the 1954 used to transport people from and ore to Chiatura. Six decades since, the now rickety cars remain stringed up along the city skyline, a Stalin-era relic that makes for a precarious commute that’s still taken up by some.
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Updated on Sep 18, 2018 12:19 PM IST
A local man looks through a window of a rusted cable car riding over the Georgian city of Chiatura, about 200 kilometers from Tbilisi, Georgia. The rusted, battered cable cars that hang hundreds of feet above this Georgian city could well be one of the world’s scariest ways to commute to work or go shopping. (Evgeniy Maloletka / AP)
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Updated on Sep 18, 2018 12:19 PM IST
A view of the gorge from a cable car with a soviet era emergency telephone set and buttons in the city of Chiatura. Chiatura, with about 20,000 people, is wedged between steep mountains that hold valuable deposits of manganese. (Evgeniy Maloletka / AP)
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Updated on Sep 18, 2018 12:19 PM IST
Anzor, a manganese plant worker who uses a cable car to get to his place of work, is reflected in a mirror as he smokes a cigarette. It was miners like him, who worked to separate the metal from the mountains during the 20th century, that complained that their steep walk to work was wearying. (Evgeniy Maloletka / AP)
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Updated on Sep 18, 2018 12:19 PM IST
Local residents wait to ride a cable car at a station in Chiatura. As a result of miners complaining, in 1954, when Georgia was part of the Soviet Union, authorities built a network of cable cars leading to the mines and some of the housing developments that crawled up the foothills and slopes. (Evgeniy Maloletka / AP)
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Updated on Sep 18, 2018 12:19 PM IST
Two cable cars move over an abandoned mine building. The installation of these ‘metal coffins’ did at once boost productivity and output in the mines. They were also able to transport ore to waiting factories and not just the workers themselves, remaining popular and in operation, except for the minor oversight of their upkeep. (Evgeniy Maloletka / AP)
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Updated on Sep 18, 2018 12:19 PM IST
Two cable cars move across two mountains in the Georgian city of Chiatura. Seventeen of the lines remain in operation today, most of them badly aged. The gondolas are battered from decades of use. Occasional repairs to keep them going have been done by amateur engineers. (Evgeniy Maloletka / AP)
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Updated on Sep 18, 2018 12:19 PM IST
People near a cable car station in Chiatura. Some of the stations where the cars start and end are in semi-ruin, with chunks of masonry missing and their Soviet-era decorations fading. (Evgeniy Maloletka / AP)
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Updated on Sep 18, 2018 12:19 PM IST
Local residents talk to each other as they ride in a cable car. But if the 64-year-old transit system looks like a wild ride to an outsider, Chiatura’s people seem to take the creaking cars and precipitous drops in stride. (Evgeniy Maloletka / AP)
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Updated on Sep 18, 2018 12:19 PM IST