Medellín's Metrocable opened in 2004 as the first aerial gondola line built as integrated public mass transit rather than tourism, connecting steep, low-income hillside neighbourhoods to the city's metro at the valley floor. Cabins running continuously on a cable climb gradients that buses and rail cannot manage, cutting journeys that had taken an hour on foot to a few minutes. The lines were paired with public buildings, libraries and parks in the served districts.
It showed that transit investment could be deliberately directed at marginalised informal settlements as a tool of social inclusion and integration. The cable-car-for-the-poor model has since been copied in La Paz, Rio and other hillside cities of the Global South.