 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Tram Returns, Finally, Renewed and Improved,
On the 137th day, the Tram was up. And it was good. On the 139th day, the Tram was down, and that was bad – but even half a million in updated equipment and emergency supplies can’t compete with a day of high winds. It was a mostly happy end, then, to a saga that began April 18 when the Tram responded to an internally generated short circuit by coming to a halt and then acting like a toddler who refuses to budge even at the prospect of candy. It took eleven hours to bring 69 people down by cage and crane.
The Tram reopened to a handful of delighted early risers on Friday, September 1, at 6:00 a.m. The re-inaugural Manhattan-bound passenger manifest was composed of equal parts Islanders who wanted to share this modest moment in history or whose jobs beckoned, and TV reporters trying desperately to find someone, anyone, to confess to being nervous. Aren’t you frightened to go up there, they wheedled? "No," said Linda Doyle, who was on her way to the gym and thought it would be fun to ride the first Tram since the April 18 shutdown. "No," said Nadine Huevner, who was on her way to her job at the Equinox fitness club. Huevner’s T-shirt bore the message "TRAIN," but it was not a comment on her preference in mass transit; she works as a personal trainer. "No," said Tom Templeton, an associate professor of thoracic surgery at Cornell. Templeton brought his bike with him, but not as a precaution in the event of Tram malfunction; he bikes to work every day. During the months the Tram was down, "I rode into Astoria and over the Queensboro Bridge, making my commute three miles and 15 minutes longer. But I did get more exercise that way." Cabin attendant Patrick Grottano blessed the first ride with these opening remarks: "Good morning! If you’re standing, hold the handrail or handstrap, thank you very much." Then he added, with barely concealed glee, "Welcome back, everybody!" "What happened April 18 was terrible, it was indeed harrowing, but every one of these problems has been fixed," assured Herb Berman, president of RIOC, earlier this week. "In reality this has been a learning experience about what is wrong, what had to be done. And it took a lot of money doing that. But now it is most unlikely that the confluence of what took place on April 18 can happen again, but if it did, we now have built-in critical redundancy." Although it was widely speculated that a power surge had been to blame for the Tram shutdown, Berman described how during a previous repair job some wires had been encased in a metal box. As the metal wore thin with use over time, "one wire was exposed and shorted, and the Tram computers are very advanced and intelligent. As soon as it detected a problem, it locked the brakes, a safety precaution that shows it was working."
One person who had no problem riding the Tram was Red Blomer of Doppelmayr CTEC, the European-based operation and maintenance contractor that is responsible for everything that happens once you press the Start button (or however it is you drive a cable car). Blomer had been riding the Tram back and forth the evening before until nearly midnight just to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. His firm builds 40 lifts a year, not only for ski resorts, but also for amusement parks, zoos, and the occasional urban transportation option such as the Roosevelt Island Tramway, which will lose its 30-year distinction as the only such commuter system in the United States when Doppelmayr finishes building another one this year in Portland, Oregon. For the 69 people who were stranded on April 18, 11 hours was a long time. And for the Islanders fed up with the heat-retaining F train during this summer’s heat wave, and with the spotty bus service to Manhattan, 136 days was a long time to wait for what seemed to amount to spare parts and a rubber-stamp from the State Labor Department. But these were not just any spare parts, according to Blomer. "It’s not as if we could simply open a catalogue and order a bunch of parts," he explained against a dramatic purple sunrise over Queens as the first Tram lifted off. "We had to say, first, what’s logical, what do we have to do, then we have to design it, then it’s going to work on paper, so now we’ve got to buy the parts. Everything that went in needed to be designed, procured, constructed in Europe, tested in Europe, put in a crate, shipped here, installed, tested here – with quite rigorous testing here – and, unfortunately, none of that happens quickly." Blomer gave as a reference point computer geeks who design their own machines – each computer is a box full of choices, such as what kind of hard drive to buy. "You don’t open a catalog and say, this is the tram control system I need," he said. "This Tram drives on a DC motor. Another tram might drive on an AC motor. Each tram does have a little specialty to it, depending on the profile, the size of the cabin, how much weight you carry back and forth." He pointed out that 136 days is a bargain when you consider that a spanking-new Tram would have taken 18 months to design, build, ship, and test. After all that, it still took nearly a month, Berman estimates, for all the powers that be to sign off, including police, firemen, the Office of Emergency Management, Berman himself, and, finally, the State Dept. of Labor. So, while it’s true that the Tram was ready to roll earlier this summer, traditional bureaucracy was, as usual, the slowest moving of vehicles. What’s new in the Tram is not immediately clear to the casual passenger. Some improvements are impossible to see, such as the extra training and protocols required of the staff, and the Police Department’s 11th-hour vow to run emergency tests every so often. Other improvements are visible, but just barely. On the floor of each car below a metal hook suspended from the ceiling is a trapdoor, and airborne riders can only trust without peeking that a cage can be lowered through it should the need arise. On the roof of each car, accessible through a panel and a slide-down ladder, is a kind of steamer trunk full of emergency supplies: food, water, blankets, and a porta-potty with privacy curtain. Tram operators now carry cell phones (with long-lasting batteries) in addition to their usual two-way radios. Under the hood, so to speak, is what Blomer calls a "redundant SCR and a brand-new diesel hydrostatic unit which runs the auxiliary evacuation system; that’s what’s new." Translated into English, that means an extra backup motor and, if that fails, a diesel-powered motor (painted bright blue; you can glimpse it in the main control room back on land) that can pull Tram cars back to their nests. An SCR is a silicone-controlled rectifier, which converts AC power to DC power; on April 18, three fuses in the SCR blew, and an electrical back-up drive was out (and across the country) for repairs. When the Swiss-made Tram went into service in 1976, it was to be a temporary option until the arrival of a subway station – which turned out to be a dozen years later. By then, the Tram was so popular with Islanders and as a New York City defining element that it snuggled in for the long haul, quite literally. At 30 years, the Tram was getting a bit long in the tooth, and would have needed extensive upgrades at some point. (That point will be a total overhaul promised for 2008.) No official representatives of RIOC were on hand for the Tram’s first outing on Sept. 1, although RIOC Board member and Islander Alberteen Anderson was there for the personal pleasure of it. "It really is exciting," she said. "I’m thrilled that this is up and working!" She then complimented the Islanders who pulled together while the Tram was down, knocking on the doors of elderly or ailing neighbors to see if they needed supplies or medicines. "Islanders are amazing, absolutely amazing! These are the times when you can say it’s nice to be a resident here," said Anderson. After the first round-trip of Sept. 1, a TV reporter rushed forward to ask of those disembarking: Was the ride scary? No. On the 137th day, all was right with the world, at least this little corner of it.
|
||||||||
