The RIOC Column

The first thing to say is how grateful we all are that all 68 people who were stranded on the Roosevelt Island Tramway Tuesday afternoon were safely transported to safety after superb work by police and fire personnel, and our own Roosevelt Island staff. The emergency response plan worked as it was designed.

And our apologies and deep respect go the those who were stranded, some for almost 12 hours, for their remarkable patience and forbearance.

We are already working with investigators from the State Department of Labor and other agencies looking into the cause of the power outage that stranded the Trams, and will continue to do so. Our initial assessment is that the outage followed an unexpected power surge that disabled the electrical system that operates the tram, but that will all be clarified as time goes on.

But the basic facts of what happened are as follows:

• On Tuesday, April 18, at approximately 5:18 p.m., operators of both of the Roosevelt Island Tramway cars reported a mechanical failure, believed to have been caused by a power surge, to the ground crew and the Island’s Public Safety Office.

• When members of the Public Safety Office were notified of this failure, a well-established protocol was put into action which dictated, among other measures, the immediate notification of the problem to the NYPD Office of Emergency Management.

• Once this notification took place and it was determined that a rescue operation was called for, I, along with members of the Executive Board of RIOC and my staff, began cooperating with members of the NYPD and the FDNY and lending them all manner of technical and logistical support to effectuate a successful rescue of the 71 stranded passengers. By 5:28 p.m., EMS was on the scene and a well-coordinated operation between the State and the City was under way.

The emergency response plan is one that has been developed with the appropriate first-responding agencies, and one which has been practiced many times. That practice allowed the smooth, if lengthy, rescue operation with a deeply appreciated lack of injuries to anyone involved.

This was the first time in the 30-year history of the Tram that a mid-air rescue has had to be attempted. We hope it is the last, but we draw solace from the fact the training proved to be effective when the responders had to put it into play.

The Tram will be closed for an unspecified period of time while the investigations are concluded to ensure they can be operated safely for passengers and crew.

The Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation remains committed to the Tram’s continued operation. RIOC currently underwrites about $300,000 of the tram’s $3.1 million annual budget and has approved a plan to fully overhaul and replace all components over the next several years. We will be doing the overhaul in stages to minimize disruption.

We expect to come out with a state-of-the-art system that will continue as one of the most visible symbol of this special Island in the middle of the East River that is home to more than 9,000 people.