page_title: Montmartre Funicular
section_title: First renovation, 1931
hierarchical_section_title: Montmartre Funicular / History / First renovation, 1931
caption_attribution_description: Funiculaire de Montmartre en 1963
context_page_description: The Montmartre Funicular is an inclined transport system serving the Montmartre neighbourhood of Paris, France, in the 18th arrondissement. Operated by the RATP, the Paris transport authority, the system opened in 1900, and was entirely rebuilt in 1935 and again in 1991.
  Notably, the system is today a funicular in name only. Its formal title, the Montmartre Funicular, is a vestige of its earlier configuration, namely where its cars operated in a counterbalanced, interconnected pair, always moving in opposite directions in concert, thus meeting the definition of a funicular. The system now uses two independently operating cars that can each ascend or descend on demand, qualifying as a double inclined elevator — retaining the term funicular in its title as a historical reference.
  The system carries passengers between the base of Montmartre and its summit — accessing the nearby Sacré-Cœur basilica and paralleling the adjacent staircases of Rue Foyatier. The 108 m cars climbs 36 m in under a minute and a half and carry two million passengers a year.
context_section_description: When the contract expired, the Mayor of Paris and the Seine Department charged the Société des transports en commun de la région parisienne (STCRP) with running the service and modernising the infrastructure. The rack system was deemed too dangerous and so the initial system was shut down; operations ceased on 1 November 1931. The water-driven system was replaced by two electrically driven cabins and reopened on 2 February 1935 after an interruption of more than three years. Traction was provided by a winch driven by a 50 hp (37 kW) electric motor, allowing a cabin holding fifty people to make the journey in 70 seconds at a speed of 2 m/s (4.5 mph). The cabins were no longer arranged like a staircase but composed of a single compartment with a horizontal floor.
  By 1955, the line was in service from 7 am until 9 pm in winter and until 11 pm in summer, entry to the station being made by cancelling a bus ticket. In 1962, the funicular transported 1,600,000 passengers and operations were suspended for some weeks for a new renovation. The line was opened in the presence of "poulbots" (Parisian illustrators) and Émile Kérembrun, the President of the République de Montmartre, a philanthropic society.
caption: A cabin in 1963, after the first renovation.
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