SINGAPORE – The skyline here will be adorned with shiny “Christmas baubles” in 2024, with Singapore Cable Car (SCC) unveiling its new cabins interspersed with the current ones in celebration of its 50th anniversary.

The seven spherical NexGen cabins will be distinctly different from the current cable cars in Singapore – or anywhere in the world.

Passengers will enter the silvery, mirrored cabin through double doors that slide open on both sides, and take in views through a large front-facing porthole window and a transparent glass bottom. Outward-opening windows enhance natural cross-ventilation too.

At night, these futuristic pods will be outlined in colourful LED lights, whose hues change to mark special occasions, such as National Day when they will run red.

Joining the fleet on the Mount Faber Line connecting Mount Faber and Sentosa Island, these new six-person cabins will offer breathtaking aerial views of Singapore’s southern area from 100m above sea level over a roughly 30-minute round trip.

“The NexGen cabins will be the world’s first chrome spherical cable car cabins, providing an immersive and visually captivating experience with their futuristic look and fully transparent glass bottom,” said Mr Buhdy Bok, managing director of Mount Faber Leisure Group which operates SCC.

The new cabins have been five years in the making, with discussions with Swiss manufacturer CWA Constructions SA starting after SCC’s 45th anniversary.

Mr Bok said he thought it would be an opportune time to develop a new generation of cable cars to “change the skyline of Singapore and rekindle Singaporeans’ love for their cable cars”.

“We decided on a radical change for the shape of the cable car to make it more exciting. The idea of the spherical cabin came up, as well as a modern and futuristic look,” he said, adding that the cabins are made exclusively for Singapore.

More than 60 million passengers have taken the cable car since 1974, of whom 80 per cent were tourists. The proportion of locals has risen since the Covid-19 pandemic, said Mr Bok, who expects ridership to hit one million in 2023 even though tourism arrivals have not fully rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.

Noting that guests’ expectations are always rising, Mr Bok said: “The challenge has always been, how do you meet or even exceed those expectations? Change is a very constant element in tourism.”

A Swiss-made Singapore icon

The futuristic NexGen cabins will be unveiled at Mount Faber Peak in February 2024 as SCC marks its 50th anniversary, although they will take to the skies later in the year.

Singapore’s cable cars are manufactured in a workshop nestled in the serene and picturesque Olten, Switzerland.

CWA Constructions, the world’s leading manufacturer of cable car cabins, has been the Republic’s go-to supplier for about 50 years.

The company, which started in 1939, has 160 employees who design and produce about 2,000 cable car cabins and rail vehicles a year. Of these, 90 per cent are exported to 96 overseas markets including Europe, Mexico, the United States, Vietnam and Singapore. 

Among its innovations is the Stuckli Rondo, the world’s first revolving gondola, unveiled in Sattel, Switzerland, in 2005. The eight-person cabin floor, and the entire gondola itself, revolves during the ride to and from the Swiss Alps. In 2016, CWA came up with the world’s largest aerial tramway cabins, with a capacity of 230 people per cabin, in Halong Bay, Vietnam.

The company began conceptualising the NexGen cabins more than two years ago. Fabrication of the cabins takes six to nine months.

“That’s the time you need if you want to create something unique,” said Mr Christoph Grob, its vice-president of sales and marketing, when The Straits Times visited the workshop in early November on what was CWA’s first international media tour.

The challenge, he said, was to create a one-of-its-kind product not seen in other parts of the world. This included the cabins’ mirror-like chrome finish.

“It is an amazing colour, unique in the world of cable cars. And the process took a very long time because it’s like a high-end finishing – the process took more than four layers of spray-painting to achieve this effect.”

The cabins’ 3cm-thick, triple-layer laminated safety glass bottoms weigh 100kg each. Together with other added features, they make the new capsules heavier than the current cabins. To ensure safe operations, the NexGen cabins will carry up to six people instead of eight.

Aerial trailblazer

Back in 1974, Singapore’s cable car system was launched on Feb 15, when then Deputy Prime Minister Goh Keng Swee and his wife took their seats in the bright yellow cabin of Cable Car No. 1 as it pulled away from Mount Faber.

The gondola lift, as it does to this day, offered its distinguished passengers a panoramic view of Keppel Harbour and Telok Blangah. Arriving at Sentosa in about nine minutes, Dr Goh was all smiles and pronounced the ride to be as good as any other he had taken abroad.

The idea to build a cable car system had been sparked as early as 1968, when the Government announced plans to turn Pulau Blakang Mati – Sentosa – from a naval base into an island getaway for tourists and locals.

Design and construction took more than two years and the system cost $5.8 million to build, terminal stations included. It initially had 43 cable cars.

Hailed as the world’s first cable car ride that crosses a harbour, the ride linking Mount Faber and Sentosa attracted an average of 50,000 passengers a month.

By July 1975, the cable cars had ferried more than a million paying passengers, with Singaporeans accounting for three-quarters of the riders.

The cable car’s first overhaul took place in January 1988, when the cables were replaced. This was completed just in time for the world’s first mass wedding celebration on May 29, when 30 couples kicked off their big day with a ride from Mount Faber.

Annual ridership averaged more than one million as SCC hit its 20-year mark in 1994. On April 10 that year, all 51 of the pioneer batch of cabins were retired, and 81 second-generation cabins were introduced – but not before offering “nostalgia trips” for Singaporeans.

Four days later, the second generation of cable car cabins was launched, boasting smoother, slightly faster rides – travelling 4m a second, instead of 3.5m a second – and audio commentaries about landmarks and highlights of Sentosa.

In 1998, Singapore was the first in Asia to offer sky dining in a cable car; and a year later, to commemorate SCC’s 25th anniversary, it launched six limited-edition cabins with glass bottoms – another world-first.

In 2009, the cable car system was revamped for the fourth time. 

Today, SCC operates two lines, including the separate Sentosa Line built in 2015, connecting various places on the island.

Celebrations have already kicked off ahead of SCC’s 50th anniversary in 2024 with Pokemon-themed cabins on the Mount Faber Line on May 1, 2023. A second phase was launched on Nov 1 with festive-themed Pokemon cabins, and will run till Dec 31, 2023. 

The new fleet of seven cable cars will be added to the current 67 on the Mount Faber Line in the second quarter of 2024.

A Cable Car Sky Pass, inclusive of Mount Faber Line and Sentosa Line, currently costs $35 for adults and $25 for children.

The cost of NexGen tickets will be available closer to the date of operations. While it may be priced at a slight premium, they will still be affordable and have mass appeal, Mr Bok said.

“As a national icon, Singapore Cable Car started with the growth of Singapore not just in terms of tourism, but as a nation,” said Mr Bok.

“The new cabins will give a totally different experience that we believe the guests will enjoy, simply because it is so different from anything that has ever been achieved thus far in the cable car experience.”