The Roosevelt Island Tram

When the City decided, during the Lindsay Administration, to develop Roosevelt Island for residential use, the intent was to make it an experimental community, highly integrated among income levels and pointing toward ideals compatible with a "city of tomorrow."

First, though, you had to get people to the island. A subway station was two decades away. A lift bridge connects with Queens, but few New Yorkers owned cars. Those who did had nowhere to park them. And besides, the city of tomorrow wouldn't contribute more than necessary to New York's chronic pollution, would it?

Of course not.

The fast and easy solution was an aerial tram unlike anything previously built here. Commuter trams were unheard of in the United States. Swiss engineering had to be brought in to compensate for an absence here.

The Tram opened in 1976, running on pulleys, like the mechanisms of a clothesline, in a loop from Second Avenue to the primary mechanical and machine room on Roosevelt Island.

Owned and operated by the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation, charged with developing the community, the Tram initially required unique tokens with fares restricted by an agreement with the MTA, which runs the subway, the bridges and tunnels in the five boroughs. These days, while not part of the MTA, it operates within its system, accepting MTA fare cards only, charging the same cheap price as a subway ride, and honoring free transfers.

Hours of Operation. Sun-Thurs 6:00 AM to 2:00 AM
Friday and Saturday 6:00 AM to 3:30 AM

My advice is that you take the Tram after dark, which comes early to New York from late fall until early spring. While the views are always breathtaking, the experience of riding out between the Manhattan towers and breaking free at the airy nexus between four boroughs is unlike any other in the world.

My other advice is, although you can take a ride right straight back, take a little walk north and get to know Roosevelt Island. Two minutes away, just passed the subway, is a Starbucks. Clustered nearby around a green is a pizza shop, a Japanese restaurant and a sports bar with a long row of flat screens about the bar.

Roosevelt Island offers a four mile promenade with many interesting stops as you take in the unobstructed views of Manhattan residents enjoy every day. At the north end, where the island meets Hellgate, is historic Lighthouse Park, a place to play and picnic or just look out the the powerful convergence of waters as the East River meets Long Island Sound.