Pork & Barrel

The City of Portland recently (well back in January) unveiled their latest infrastructure addition, the OHSU Tram. Originally developers and the Oregon Health and Science University (also a major hospital) claimed the project would cost a cool $15 million. However, by the time of the project's completion, the final tab was a disgusting $57 million, of which the City agreed to pay 15%...this doesn't seem like much, but still comes out to $8,550,000 taken away from more pressing community needs (Can we say affordable housing? It's starting to look like Cali around here.). So as our way of protesting this expensive aerial limo service for OHSU docs (it goes from the hospital to their new facilities in the South Waterfront district, a rant for another day...the public pays $4 round trip, University staff don't pay shit) we decided to take the flying metal suppository for a spin.

Here's the view from the Tram, looking back down the hill to OHSU's new Health and Healing Building (or some such hippy madness).










Here's the little guy itself. There are actually two cars, leading to a fun community contest to name them both. A few of my favorite entries: Boon & Doggle, Dumb & Dumber, Hood & Wink, and a few better ones that I can't recall at the moment. They officially chose "Walt" and "Jean" leading most people to say "Fuck You."

Here's a few great shots of the city from the Tram itself...notice Mt. Saint Helens (the still very active volcano that exploded in 1980).