Itanagar's streets are choking — and Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu wants a cable car to be the answer. Meeting with the Itanagar Municipal Corporation on Saturday, 24 October 2026, Khandu floated a modern ropeway system as a serious solution to the capital city's mounting traffic congestion and connectivity gaps.

Why Itanagar's roads alone cannot keep up

Itanagar, nestled in the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas, faces a geography that makes conventional road-widening expensive, slow, and often impractical. The city's population has expanded steadily, compressing its hill-hugging roads into daily bottlenecks. Where flat cities build flyovers, hilly capitals need smarter vertical thinking — and that is precisely the logic Khandu is leaning on.

Across India's Northeast, states have increasingly examined ropeways and aerial transit as terrain-appropriate alternatives to asphalt. Khandu's proposal fits squarely into that regional pattern, signalling that Arunachal Pradesh intends to accelerate that shift rather than wait for it.

What Khandu told the Municipal Corporation

In his post, Khandu was direct: 'Itanagar deserves better. And we are going to deliver.' He described the ropeway as a 'smarter solution for a growing capital,' framing it not as a luxury add-on but as a functional urban necessity. The meeting with the Itanagar Municipal Corporation — the civic body responsible for planning and services in the capital — suggests the conversation has moved beyond aspiration into institutional engagement.

Specific feasibility studies, project timelines, or tender details from the meeting have not yet been made public. What is clear is that the Chief Minister is personally pushing the idea at the municipal level, which is typically the first formal step before a proposal enters state budget or central funding pipelines.

Khandu's infrastructure push since 2016

Pema Khandu has helmed Arunachal Pradesh since 2016, with infrastructure — roads, bridges, tunnels, and now urban mobility — as a consistent centrepiece of his administration. The ropeway proposal extends that focus into city planning, a domain that has historically received less attention than highway connectivity in the state. If it advances, it would make Itanagar one of the few state capitals in India to deploy aerial transit as a mainstream commuter solution.

The next milestone to watch: whether a feasibility study is commissioned and whether the project finds a home in the state's upcoming budget cycle or attracts central government support under urban mobility schemes.