The funicular railways of Valparaíso: mobility, public transportation and urban development (1880-1930)

Abstract

This article explores the beginnings and development of the funicular railway system of Valparaíso, the Chilean port with the highest growth in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The objective is to account for the historical trajectory of a public transport modality that was of vital importance for the development of mobility in the city and for urban development itself. Through a methodology based on urban history, the implementation and development of the funicular railway (funicular) from the 1880s will be reviewed, emphasizing the technological change that meant the displacement in height, for a city accustomed to a mobilization by trams (first pulled by horses and then electrical), as well as the use of stairs for pedestrians and pack animals in the hills. One of the main conclusions of this article is that the elevators had a socially diverse territorial distribution when reaching hill heights with residents of different conditions and, especially, those inhabited by popular sectors. This is relevant, considering that the other transport services until then only performed in the Plan, arriving at the hills just after the 1920s —by buses— precisely when the elevators began their process of obsolescence.