TX Parks & Wildlife closes Wyler Aerial Tramway after engineering analysis
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) has decided to close the Wyler Aerial Tramway at Franklin Mountains State Park until further notice operations following an engineering analysis.
“Replacement of the tram is estimated to cost millions of dollars and TPWD does not have the financial resources to execute a capital construction project of this size at this time,” TPWD said in a news release.
TPWD has operated the tram for the past 19 years. It said an engineering analysis was conducted over the summer as part of a deferred maintenance project planned to begin later this fall.
“Despite passing annual inspections, the latest analysis concluded the tram has surpassed its life expectancy and is no longer suited for public use. Out of an abundance of caution, TPWD has closed the tramway while it considers its options,” the state agency said.
In July 2011, the State of Texas cut $125,000 from the Wyler Aerial Tram’s budget. The move would have resulted in the loss of five rangers and the reduction of a five-day-a-week operational schedule to just three days a week.
In an interview with the El Paso Inc, then state representative Dee Margo said he was able to restore the funding for the tramway after the state decided not to fund a $3-million visitor center at the Franklin Mountains State Park.
“The tramway was listed as one of the items to be cut from their budget, totally removed. I asked if there wasn’t some way they could come up with, as I recall, $275,000 required to maintain the tramway over the next biennium. It was the smallest item in the state park’s budget but was critical. In the end, we got the funding,” Margo told the El Paso Inc. at the time, “So, given the fact that we were not going to get the visitor center, I asked if they could at least find a way for El Paso to preserve the tramway.”
The Wyler Aerial Tramway at Franklin Mountains State Park features two aerial cable cars that travel over the jagged mountain and rock formations on the east side of the Franklin Mountains to Ranger Peak. From the summit, about 45,000 visitors per year experience a 360-degree view of two countries and three states.
“The tramway operates on a 2,400-foot-long single-span cable system, meaning that there are no support towers along its nearly half-mile length, an engineering feat,” according to the TPWD website, “From bottom to top, visitors are lifted some 940 vertical feet as they glide high above the rugged terrain below.”
The tramway has been in operation nearly six decades. It was originally designed to provide maintenance access for television transmission towers in the Franklin Mountains until it was donated to TPWD in 1997. The department re-opened it to the public in 2001 following extensive renovation.
The state agency said construction of the tram predates the establishment of national tramway standards and, despite its clean record and successful annual inspections, the engineering review conducted this summer recommended the tramway be updated to meet today’s standards, which would require a complete overhaul of the tramway.
