Description of the attraction
The Roosevelt Island Cable Car is both New York's public transportation and fun attraction. The townspeople are accustomed to it as to something ordinary, the tourist will be delighted with the flight over Manhattan and the East River.
The narrow and long Roosevelt Island is located between Manhattan and Queens. It is crossed by the high Queensboro Bridge, but the problem is that there is no direct exit from the bridge to the island. In the first half of the 20th century, the inhabitants of the island traveled by tram to the middle of the bridge, where they got out and transferred to the elevator, which brought them to their native land. But in 1957, the tram line running across the bridge was eliminated. Of all the options for organizing passenger traffic with the island, we chose the cable car - for a while, until the metro comes here. But the townspeople are so accustomed to the funicular that it operates even now, although there has long been an underground station on the island.
Created in 1976, the cableway runs alongside the Queensboro Bridge. She has only two stations: one in Manhattan, the other on Roosevelt Island. Two Italian-made trailers move back and forth along parallel ropes, each of them accommodating up to 110 people.
The trip is kind of like flying on an airplane (only without noise). The cockpit starts from ground level and begins to climb rather quickly. Off the Manhattan coast, the cable car reaches its highest point, 76 meters above the East River. This is not enough to rise above the rooftops of skyscrapers, but the eyes of passengers are presented with an amazing panorama of Manhattan, Queens and the river separating them. This view is especially good in the evening, when the cabin soaring in the sky is surrounded by the myriad lights of the giant city.
The tram of the aerial road slowly crawls at a speed of 28 kilometers per hour, but the journey in one direction takes only three minutes. Each trailer makes 115 trips per day. Since 1976, the cable car has carried over 26 million passengers.
New Yorkers do not want to give up on this cable car, although accidents do happen here from time to time. The most famous of these occurred in 2006, when 69 passengers were stuck in trailers over the East River due to a power outage. They were evacuated with the help of special rescue baskets, everyone remained alive and well.
