East River Rescue: After a broken tramway left commuters stranded 200 ft. up, it took daring action and ingenuity to get them down

摘要

When passengers boarded New York City's aerial tram late one balmy afternoon in April, conditions seemed ideal for enjoying one of the country's most scenic commutes. The crowd was light, the sky was clear and a warm breeze drifted through the open windows. The tram's two cars rolled out of their stations, 3100 ft. apart in Manhattan and on Roosevelt Island, just after 4:30 pm. They passed each other at the halfway point-as they always do-and then suddenly and silently stopped. "I had never known the tram to stop before," says Alex Gamburg, a 74-year-old Russian-born illustrator and one of Roosevelt Island's nearly 10,000 residents. Gamburg has been riding the tram for 23 of the 30 years it has been in operation. "After it stopped, everybody began talking," he says. "It was very social. I asked the woman next to me where she was from, and she said Iceland-so we talked about Iceland." All 47 passengers in Gamburg's car remained in high spirits, he says, as the minutes turned into hours and night fell on the tram, still dangling 200 ft. above the East River.