Sun Moon Lake in central Taiwan is a great tourist attraction – and extremely popular with wedding couples. Since summer 2009, a Doppelmayr gondola lift has linked the lake with the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village (FACV) theme park, crossing a wildly romantic mountain ridge along the way. In 2001, an 8-MGD from Doppelmayr went into service in the park itself. Both tourist sites attract large numbers of visitors.

The theme park was created on the initiative of Jung-I Chang, the current president of the operating company, and opened in 1986. His prime mission was to commemorate and celebrate Taiwan’s indigenous culture. It was not long before his dream of building the park was also shown to be a very sound business decision. Today, the park attracts 1.5 million visitors a year. Hsieh-Shen Chang, the second son of the park’s founder and an Executive Director of FACV, joined the family business as soon as the park opened. Hsieh-Shen Chang’s main task involves handling the expansion project for the theme park. He has therefore devoted a great deal of energy and enthusiasm to providing an aerial connection between FACV and the region’s other great tourist destination, Sun Moon Lake. Taiwan’s largest lake covers a surface area of eight square kilometers and is famous for its pagodas as well as its many legends. Sun Moon Lake National Scenic Area Administration is responsible for managing the area. This authority organizes group wedding ceremonies at the specially created wedding pavilion as well as a host of events such as the annual swimming race which attracts 10,000 participants. Throughout the rest of the year, swimming in the lake is prohibited for safety reasons due to the risk posed by the many pleasure boats.

Prolonged planning process

Back in 2000, Hsieh-Shen Chang had originally planned to build the ropeway link to the lake at the same time as the gondola lift inside the theme park itself. However, while the theme park gondola was built on privately owned land, the Sun Moon Lake facility was a “Build-Operate- Own” (B.O.O.) project crossing national land and consequently involved a much lengthier planning process. But it was certainly worth all the hard work! The ground-breaking ceremony took place in mid-2008 and the ropeway finally went into service in late summer 2009.

Technically impressive

The ropeway crosses a mountain ridge with a steep-sided valley. This made it necessary to incorporate a long unsupported rope span of 788 m at a height of 160 m above ground. For this section, a rescue ropeway with two self-propelled carriers was built. The carriers are parked on swing arms on the towers immediately next to the rope span and, in an emergency, bring the cabins to the nearest tower, where the passengers are lowered by rope. This long span also posed a challenge in terms of rope guidance due to the high wind pressures. Doppelmayr guarantees problem-free operation up to wind speeds of 50 km/h. To further increase safety, the Doppelmayr RPD (Rope Position Detector) system was installed, which provides fail-safe monitoring of the rope position on the tower sheaves. The stations had to be extended to handle the exceptionally high transport capacity of 3,000 passengers an hour. The drive station is located in the theme park, the fixed tension system in the lakeside station. The tension carriage is adjusted for the entire day prior to start-up and before the cabins come onto the rope. The cabins themselves are parked at the theme park station.

Uncompromising quality requirements

Director Hsieh-Shen Chang is pleased with Doppelmayr’s performance. He chose Doppelmayr because of their outstanding reputation for quality and service. There can be no compromises where these aspects are concerned: “We operate 365 days a year. Safety and reliability have to be our top priority!” And that’s why Hsieh-Shen Chang is convinced he made another correct decision in entrusting Doppelmayr with the Sun Moon Lake Ropeway project. His view is also borne out by the particularly complex planning process required for a B.O.O. project. In this case, the authorities carry out a comprehensive inspection of the ropeway installation itself (“Doppelmayr provided thorough training for our team”) as well as rescue procedures, fire control and the arrangements for passenger line management.

8-MGD Sun Moon Lake
Transport capacity 3,000 PPH
Trip time 6.8 min
Speed 6.0 m/s
Cabins (LWI) 86
Interval 9.6 s
Inclined length 1,925 m
Vertical rise 110 m
Towers 16
Drive Park
Tension Lake