Trams! Trams! Trams!

Over at OregonLive, they are reporting about a new tram proposal, this time for Troutdale:

Milwaukie-based Mass Tram America hopes to build wind turbines and solar-panel structures from Troutdale to Mount Hood. They would be used as power and infrastructure for a tram system that would carry passengers and freight — ultimately nationwide.

The current Portland Aerial Tram was constructed primarily for the benefit of the Oregon Health Sciences University, in order to connect the existing “Pill Hill” campus with additional OHSU facilities being built in the South Waterfront redevelopment area.

This proposal, on the other hand, is nothing like that. It does not have the backing of heavy hitters like the City of Portland, or Homer Williams, or OHSU, nor would it involve world-class Swiss engineering firms to build the cars.

Instead, this is a proposal by a “privately owned” (read no-one was stupid enough to invest in it) aerial tram company based in, of all places, cosmopolitan Milwaukie, Oregon! The company, known as Mass Tram America, Inc., appears to be the latest in pie-in-the-sky transportation “consultant” firms that are attempting to huckster our small-time cities out of planning dollars. (See similar recent efforts by “consultant headhunters” regarding a wine train to McMinnville.) MTA has no experience designing or building trams anywhere. The company principles consist of a former realtor and coin-operated carwash operator, and a lower-level Bank of America sales staffer and interior designer. MTA has nobody with education and experience in transportation or manufacturing.

Their idea is to build a nationwide network of aerial trams carrying freight and passengers both. It’s Jack Bogdanski’s worst nightmare. (At least this time Vera Katz isn’t playing cheerleader.) The trams would utilize modified former Boeing airframes as tram cars. The ironic thing is there is some precedent for such an improbable design: see the Mount Hood Skyway, which operated using converted busses.

Still, you can’t help but feel that if these folks at MTA were approaching somebody like the City of Portland or Metro, they’d be laughed out of the building before they even got a chance to talk to the decision makers. Troutdale, though, seems to be entertaining them, as if MTA really had the ability to do more than put pretty watercolor design concepts on an amateurish website.