By Dian Woodhouse
October 7, 2005
The following sounds horrendous and disturbingly familiar to what we've been hearing recently. Too, too familiar.
I found that the city of Portland, Oregon, has been in the throes of aerial tram transportation for a long time, almost ten years, maybe longer, and interesting things have happened there, to say the least.
Originallly, Portland's tram was marketed as connecting downtown with the university, and paid for partially by the university and the rest by private funding. However:
A strange thing has happened to Oregon Health & Science University’s aerial tram as it rises toward reality.
It is no longer OHSU’s tram.
It is Portland’s tram, according to OHSU officials. The tram project that university officials have pushed for years, from the North Macadam development area to OHSU’s Marquam Hill campus, will be a public transportation device — sort of like the bus system, OHSU representatives say.
And OHSU officials can make no promises on how much they’ll help in building it.
“We don’t see this as the OHSU tram, the way you write it up,” OHSU President Dr. Peter Kohler said in an interview last month. “We see this as a transportation issue.”
The distinction could be important to Portland taxpayers...
...The financing questions come as university officials and North Macadam landowners are negotiating with city officials about one of the largest unanswered questions surrounding North Macadam: how to divvy up the $60 million to $70 million in infrastructure costs required to make the development happen. The tram’s costs — $10 million to $16 million for construction and $2.4 million in annual operating costs — are part of the negotiations..
...Sean Brennan, a tram opponent and a resident of the Corbett-Terwilliger-Lair Hill neighborhood, said he remembers a March 2001 neighborhood meeting in which an OHSU representative “solidly and unequivocally said they were going to pay for the tram through donations. … We weren’t hallucinating about that..."
Much more here: Nice tram, who pays?10/11/2002
(Remember prices and the date of the above article.)
Background here:
The Portland Aerial Tram is an aerial tramway under construction in Portland, Oregon. It will connect the city's South Waterfront area with Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) and the Marquam Hill neighborhood surrounding the university, and introduce yet another mode of transportation in Portland. It is tentatively scheduled for completion in 2006 at a cost of $40 million.
Portland Ariel Tram--Wikipedia
Two years after the newspaper article "Who Pays?" we have citizen reaction and escalating costs as they go ahead with it:
The Portland City Council has voted unanimously to approve the building of the OHSU aerial tram.
It also voted 3-2 to buy out residents along the street below who don't want to live under an aerial tram.
Perhaps the most alarming news to emerge from the hearing was testimony that the real budget for the construction, originally pegged at $15 million and recently increased to $28.5 million, is going to be more like $40 million. And counting.
And that the tram's operating budget is going to be more than $3 million a year. And that there's still going be lots of increased street traffic on account of various shuttle buses that will be running up and down the hill in addition to the tram.
Congratulations to Homer Williams and all the other developers who will profit enormously from the massive outlay of scarce city tax dollars that this project will entail. And to their political fixer, wherever he may be hiding.
Jack Bog's Blog: Done Deal 6/10/2004
The residents under the tram could choose to stay under it or sell to the city, but the designation of the tram, mid-project, as public transportation, might have opened it up to eminent domain, which has historically been used for transportation. So nobody had a choice at that point, it seems.
Then... they ran out of money:
It's so sad. They sold this to the City Council on a $15.5 million budget, with the mayor saying it was going to be a beautiful picture postcard. Now, at $28.44 million, they've got a nasty looking bunch of concrete boxes and plastic towers about which even the Architecuture Dandy (see below) can't find much good to say.
And where is the other $13 million going to come from? Here's the latest rap from the tram people:
"The board also asked an informal finance committee to figure out new revenue sources without asking the city for general fund money, and without reducing city funds designated for transportation maintenance and operation.
The guidelines suggest looking for additional contributors from the Marquam Hill community, such as the Veteran Affairs Medical Center and the Portland Shriners Hospital for Children. OHSU committed to $9 million of the original $15.5 million budget.
Other potential sources include possible tradeoffs for federal funding in the urban renewal area; energy tax credits based on the efficiency of tram operations; and additional property tax money generated by the estimated $1.8 billion of development that the tram is expected to help stimulate."
Mike Lindberg, a former Portland City Council member who serves on the nonprofit board, recalled earlier instances when the city faced shortages for Pioneer Courthouse Square and the Performing Arts Center. Instead of cutting important details, the city found additional money, he said.
I repeat, where is the additional money going to be found this time? I'm sure, in the pockets of people who pay (a) local property tax, (b) state income tax, and (c) federal income tax....
Jack Bog's Blog: And she's buying a stairway to heaven2/12/04
The organization in charge of building the aerial tram is PATI, Portland Aerial Transportation, Inc.
Portland Aerial Transportation, Inc. (PATI) is a private non-profit organization empowered by the City of Portland to ensure that the process of designing and constructing the ...
PATI
Another blogger says:
In beautiful downtown Portland, OR there is a tram that is mighty important to some strategically placed rich people. Some of the financing is coming from the less wealthy taxpayers of Portland...
...The tram doesn't go a long distance but it does go downhill from the top of the hill. In fact, it goes from the top of the hill down to South Waterfront Urban Renewal Area. South Waterfront Urban Renewal Area sounds pretty important, doesn't it? It doesn't really exist except on plans to get money from somewhere. However, when the urban renewal area is finally brought into physical reality, it will house, theoretically, rich people and places where rich people can party...
JohnHays.net: The tram scam of portland, oregon
Our original idea, which has been around Ogden for decades, was to build a tram from Ogden to Snow Basin. What we're seeing and hearing now is just too close to this Portland disaster for comfort, and our tram isn't even going to Snow Basin anymore.
Look at it---suddenly, here in Ogden, there is an idea that will "make us unique." Tram from new development downtown to the university, etc., etc.
We absolutely cannot afford to go the way Portland went on this. Ogden has enough financial problems already. If we walk into this and find ourselves in Portland's position a few years from now, we deserve what we get, because a better blueprint on how Not to do something like this I have never seen.
But it's so familiar.
Red flags all over on this one.
