Aerial Tramway photo(s) of the day
I take the #19 bus to and from work, so the lower terminal of the OHSU Lathe-of-Heavenish tramway is right next to where I cross the river. Since it's not likely that I'm ever going to ride on the things (the originally proposed "oh, it's just more mass transit and you can use a Tri-Met pass to ride it" was discarded when the powers that be realized that hoi polloi might actually sully their precious vehicles [wonder why your hospital bills are so high? Well, this is part of it,] so I'm not going to go out of my way to pay US$4 for a round trip excursion to a goddamn hospital,) I might as well get a few more pictures of the cars as they go by.
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Okay, the operating costs excuse is a new one to me. The thought that comes immediately to mind is “WHAT operating costs? It’s a fucking box on a stick!” but this is an operation run for a hospital, so the prices will inevitably roll up towards infinity.
I was pretty impressed how OHSU managed to blackmail the city into tossing in another US$8 million after the last cost overrun, and just how quickly things started to go after the city coughed up the dough.
I wish that the CoP had said “fine, move to the suburbs” the last time OHSU tried that threat. I’m sure that the staff and management at OHSU would have hated to relocate to darkest Beaverton and have a hour longer (2 hour if they took the trolley, grrr) commute, but at least OHSU would have become someone else’s parasite.
But who am I fooling? The CoP is run by an elite that’s got severe Los Angeles envy, so if it wasn’t OHSU there’d be some other bloated corporation bellying up with its hat in hand. The whole South Macadam project (are there any stores going in down there? No. Any reasonable transit accessability? No, unless you want to take the trolley into town (a long haul unless you’re heading for Little California [Riverplace])) is proof of that.
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Ah, the tram. Can you actually hear the sucking of the tax dollars when it passes overhead? <a href=“http://www.portlandfeed.com/2007/01/09/trammed-up-the-bunghole/”>http://www.portlandfeed.com/2007/01/09/trammed-up-the-bunghole/