Coasting above Mexico City’s infernal congestion is normally a prerogative of the well-heeled, who take helicopters or pay to use the upper deck of two-tier highways to avoid the chaos below.

In October, however, thousands of residents of this ragged industrial suburb began getting to work or school in brightly colored pods that glide along the city’s first commuter cable-car route.

從墨西哥市地獄般壅塞交通的上方越過，通常是有錢人的特權，他們乘坐直升機或付費使用雙層高速公路的上層，避開下方的混亂世界。

然而，去年10月，這破敗工業郊區的數千居民，開始可以坐在色彩亮麗的車廂內，沿該市一條通勤纜車線滑動，去上班上學。

The Mexicable, a seven-stop line that runs just over three miles through a furrow of poor hillside neighborhoods, is part of a growing constellation of cable cars around Latin America that links marginalized communities to their cities’ metropolitan hearts.

In Ecatepec, the largest and most dangerous municipality in the 21 million-strong expanse of greater Mexico City, the Mexicable has brought new visitors, shorter commutes, a burst of street art and a new sense of inclusion in city life, residents said.

「墨西哥纜車線」是條有7個站、穿越一片貧窮山坡社區的路線，全長僅略多於三哩，是拉丁美洲日益星羅棋布的纜車線之一，用以銜接邊緣社區與城市的都會心臟。

整個大墨西哥市人口逾2100萬，埃卡堤佩是這廣大區域中最大最危險的市區，居民說，墨西哥纜車線帶來新遊客，縮短通勤時間，街頭藝術蓬勃發展，還予人一種融入城市生活的新歸屬感。

“It’s great,” said Marco Antonio Gonzalez, who used to spend an hour in a cramped bus to get from his home in San Andres de la Canada, the Mexicable’s final stop, to his job at a warehouse in the center of Ecatepec. He now has a smooth, 17-minute cable ride over dun-colored rooftops, half-bald soccer pitches and narrow streets strung with glittery bunting.

The new transport system has made him proud. “People never build something as impressive as this in a neighborhood like ours,” he said.

馬可．安東尼奧．龔薩雷茲說：「這真的很棒。」以往，他必須花1小時擠公車從他在聖安德列斯德拉加拿達的家，也是墨西哥纜車線的終點站，前往埃卡堤佩市中心的一座倉庫工作。現在他可以搭纜車，順暢地花17分鐘，穿越過一個個暗褐色的屋頂、半禿的足球場，以及掛著閃亮彩旗的狹窄街道。

新的運輸系統令他引以為傲。他說：「人們從沒有在我們這樣的社區，建造過這麼令人感動的東西。」

Ecatepec stretches north from the tip of the capital’s subway network into steep hills where square cinder-block houses are stacked like Lego pieces. Many who use the cable car also catch a bus and then a subway to reach jobs — at restaurants, homes, offices or construction sites — in more affluent parts of town.

Nancy Montoya, a housekeeper who lives in Esperanza, near the sixth Mexicable stop, said she saved about two hours per day using the new system — time she spends doing homework with her children or buying groceries.

Over the past 12 years, gondola systems have been built in cities that include Cali and Medellin in Colombia; Caracas, Venezuela; La Paz, Bolivia; and Rio de Janeiro. There are plans to build systems in half a dozen other Latin American cities, according to the Gondola Project, which tracks cable car programs worldwide.

埃卡堤佩從首都墨西哥市地鐵網的頂端向北延伸到陡峭的山丘地區，在那裡，正方形的煤渣塊房子如樂高積木般堆疊。許多纜車使用者得再搭一段公車並再換一次地鐵，才能抵達位在墨西哥市較富裕地區的工作地點，如餐館、住家、辦公室或建築工地。

南西．蒙托亞是名管家，家住靠近墨西哥纜車線第六站的艾斯佩蘭沙。她說使用新系統每天約可節省2小時，她拿這些時間陪子女做功課或購買雜貨。

過去12年，建造纜車系統的城市包括哥倫比亞的卡利和美德殷，委內瑞拉首都卡拉卡斯，玻利維亞首都拉巴斯，巴西里約熱內盧。據追縱全球纜車計畫的「纜車計畫」，另有6個拉丁美洲城市欲興建纜車系統。

說文解字看新聞

文／王麗娟

有纜車（cable car）協助穿越擁擠的交通，的確是通勤族（commuter）的一大福音。文中所提的埃卡堤佩（Ecatepec），因同時是治安極差的危險城市，擠公車遇扒手、遇搶司空見慣，因此，搭乘纜車（cable car rides）還可減少被搶機會，也算另一種福音。

cable car 一般指的是高空纜車（air cable car），例如一些滑雪勝地利用高空纜車將滑雪客送往高處。本文的墨西哥纜車也是，雖然它同時刺激了觀光，但主要功能是通勤纜車（commuter cable car），台灣的貓空纜車（Maokong Gondola）也是高空纜車，雖然也作運輸用，主要應是觀光纜車（tourist cable car）。

最知名的地面纜車非舊金山纜車系統（San Francisco Cable Cars）莫屬，它是行駛在馬路上的輕軌運輸系統（light rail transit），又稱叮噹車，因為每到街口，為提醒四周車輛與行人注意，司機會搖動銅鈴發出叮噹叮噹響聲得名，這種復古聲響常讓乘客興奮莫名，彼此相視而笑，連觀光客行人也跟著露出笑容，成為旅遊舊金山的獨特經驗。

Among the more unnerving sights a traveler may come across in distant corners of the world are giant hairballs of wires, clumped at the tops of utility poles or hanging perilously from the sides of buildings.

They speak of the exuberant, confounding and sometimes dangerous disorder of a country free of the rules and regulations that make modern life safe.

旅行到世界上某個偏遠的角落，可能會讓人比較神經緊張的景象之一，是大團大團的電線，亂糟糟的壓在電線桿頂端，或是危險地垂掛在建築物側邊。

這些透露了一個沒有法律規章來保障現代生活安全的國家，其不受限制、混亂、有時危險的失序。

For example, Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, is famous for its buzzing, swirling, incomprehensible traffic. If you dare take your eyes off the road, a glance overhead will find a representation of this same tangled, heedless, even insouciant approach to life. One Vietnamese author wrote fancifully of the huge cobweb of electrical, telephone and cable-television wires covering the city.

Utilities in most developed countries don’t keep their overhead wiring tidy for tidiness’ sake; safety is on the line. A crazy tangle can make repairing faults difficult and dangerous, and wiring improvised by amateurs can be a serious fire hazard.

例如，越南首都河內以吵雜、讓人頭暈和莫名其妙的交通聞名。如果你敢不看路，往上方瞄一眼，將發現一種同樣紊亂、不留心，甚至漫不經心的生活態度的呈現。一位越南作家曾以極富想像力的筆觸描繪覆蓋這個城市的電線、電話線和電視纜線交織的龐大蜘蛛網。

大部分已開發國家的電力公司維持上方接線的整潔，為的不是整潔本身；安全才是重點。瘋狂的線路交纏可能使修復故障的工作變得困難和危險，而且業餘人士隨意接線很可能引發火災。

No visitor to a place where they are common, like Vietnam, India or Pakistan, is more likely to be appalled — and intrigued — by these Gordian tangles than a traveling engineer.

“It’s sometimes an intellectual challenge to look and try to figure out what’s going on,” said Dickon Ross, editor-in-chief of Engineering & Technology, a magazine published by an institute in London.

對常見這些「哥帝爾斯的繩結」（源自希臘神話，意指難解的結）的地方，像是越南、印度和巴基斯坦，沒有訪客比旅行中的工程師更可能驚嚇─及著迷。

倫敦一個研究機構發行的雜誌「工程與科技」總編輯迪康．羅斯說：「去看和努力想出是怎麼回事，有時是智力的挑戰。」

In July, the magazine invited its 138,000 readers to send in pictures of “the worst and most dangerous examples of electrical wiring from around the world.” Out of 500 submissions, it selected 12 to publish for readers to rank, each seeming more outrageous than the last.

One from Vietnam showed a “terrifying image of a hapless Vietnamese electrician, totally entangled in the cobweb of crossed wires and hanging above the street like a giant spider in a hard-hat,” wrote the magazine’s features editor, Vitali Vitaliev.

去年七月，該雜誌邀請它的13萬8000名讀者傳送「世界各地最糟糕和最危險的電線線路」照片。該雜誌從500張傳送的照片中選出12張刊出，讓讀者評比，似乎一張比一張更令人吃驚。

雜誌的專題報導編輯維塔利．維塔利夫寫道，來自越南的一張照片顯示「一個倒楣的越南電工嚇人的景象，他完全陷身於錯綜複雜的電線交纏成的蜘蛛網中，高掛在街道上方，活像一隻戴著頭盔的大蜘蛛」。

By a wide margin, the readers’ choice was a showy image from Madras, India, depicting a metered main power line tapped by “multiple bare, unterminated wires,” all loosely hung from a wood board that already bore the scorch marks of a fire.

Ross pointed out that the survey was hardly comprehensive: Which countries were included had less to do with where the wiring is wackiest than where engineers like to take vacations.

A case in point: One of the most eye-catching pictures, he said, came from St. Tropez, in the south of France.

讀者票選大幅領先的是來自印度馬德拉斯的一張很顯眼的照片，描繪一條有量表的主電源線，連接著「多條裸露、沒有終端接頭的電線」，鬆散的掛在一塊已有火災燒焦痕跡的木板上。

羅斯指出，這項調查絕對不全面：哪些國家被列入，與電線接得最古怪較無關，而是與工程師喜歡去何處度假較有關。

舉一個恰當的例子：他說，最吸睛的照片之一來自法國南部的聖托佩。