The Ještěd cable car is an aerial cable car service in the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

, linking Horní Hanychov in the city of

Liberec Liberec (; ) is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 108,000 inhabitants, making it the fifth largest city in the country. It lies on the Lusatian Neisse River, in a basin surrounded by mountains. The city centre is well preserved and is pr ...

with the summit of

Ještěd Ještěd (; ) is the highest mountain of the Ještěd–Kozákov Ridge in the north of the Czech Republic, at . It is the symbol of the city of Liberec. On the summit is the Ještěd Tower restaurant, hotel and television tower, designed by Kare ...

mountain. The cable car is operated by

Czech Railways Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surname) ...

. The cable car was opened in 1933, and was operated by

Czechoslovak State Railways Czechoslovak State Railways (''Československé státní dráhy'' in Czech or ''Československé štátne dráhy'' in Slovak, often abbreviated to ČSD) was the state-owned railway company of Czechoslovakia. The company was founded in 1918 ...

for most of its history. In the early 1970s the cable car was reconstructed. It was reopened in its current form in 1975. On 31 October 2021, a cabin crashed in an accident and one operator was killed. A further fourteen people, including one operator, had to be rescued from a second cable car by firefighters. The official report into the incident published in 2024 determined the cause of the accident to be the breaking of a haul rope and the prior illegal removal of an automatic brake. The cable car usually operates on a daily basis according to a pre-set timetable but does not operate in adverse weather conditions. However, since the crash in 2021 the system has been closed indefinitely.

References

* Aerial lifts in the Czech Republic Liberec {{CzechRepublic-transport-stub