Mountainous terrain isn't required, but it's the situation in which cable cars make the most sense because "better" options that require relatively flat ground aren't available.

Remember, the big selling point of a cable car is that it's cheap, but it's also lower-capacity than more usual kinds of transit. It's more legit than some gimmicky 'gadgetbahn', but not by much.

There's a new CBC Radio article that OP may have forgotten to link to.

It does seem like there's not much of a use case if you don't have the requirement to cover a large change in elevation in a relatively short distance - mountains, or to get up and over a shipping lane, or something like that. The article argues for them to be inexpensive, which...I'm sure they are, but they seem to be relatively low-capacity, and pretty limited in terms of the number of stops you could include on a route. But I'm not an expert, and maybe I'd be surprised.

Not just mountainous terrain. Mexico City has one that goes over some densely packed naighborhoods. The roads are not good for buses, so the cable cars go over the town and connect to the BRT

Also works well over bodies of water.

mountainous terrain is a requirement

Anything a train can't do, yeah.

Yeah I read the same article and thought I included the link but silly me 😝 I assumed a mountainous terrain was a requirement but appears to be doable here in the GTA too. I was surprised to learn a project is already underway in the Oshawa region.

😔

Gadgetbahns are a waste of time. We already know what works, they are pretending we don't to indefinitely postpone building trains that will decrease oil profits.

I saw those in New Zealand, in the case of steep hills they are hard to beat.

We will get one to SFU from the SkyTrain first. If it goes well TransLink may do more.

The way it is build in La Paz in Bolivia allows it to have quite a lot of capacity.

Yes each cabin only holds 10 people or so, but they come every 30 seconds or so if I remember correctly.