Cape Town - Operations at the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway have resumed after the cableway had to halt all trips on Tuesday to replace a back-up generator which failed, leaving hundreds of visitors stuck at the top of the mountain.
On Monday, patrons to the aerial cableway were stuck for at least three hours when a back-up generator failed to kick into gear during stage 6 load shedding.
Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company (TMACC) managing director Wahida Parker said the cableway was back to normal operations.
“On Monday, stage 6 load shedding was suddenly implemented due to the loss of additional generation units and a shortage of capacity, as stated by Eskom. The impact of unplanned, high volume power surges caused the back-up generator of the TMACC to fail.
“The safety of our visitors is our main priority.
‘‘We therefore took the precautionary measure of closing the cableway on Tuesday to allow our technical team with the help of experts to run multiple tests to ensure that any possible issues with the back-up generator have been resolved,” said Parker.
About 500 people were stuck on top of Table Mountain.
According to Parker, there were a mix of people stuck on Monday evening, including elderly people, families with children and, as per TMACC processes, they brought down the infirm and mothers with babies first.
Everybody was safely down the mountain by 9pm.
Parker said visitors who were at the bottom waiting to go up were offered free tickets for an alternative day.
“We’re confident that our back-up generator is up and running and working effectively, and the cableway is now open to visitors again.
‘‘Visitors with pre-booked online tickets that expired (on Tuesday) and who were unable to visit Table Mountain throughout Tuesday, were offered fresh tickets valid for seven days. It’s very important to us that any visitor’s experience of Table Mountain is positive and safe.”