They hang from spacy curved handles and look like blunt silver bullets, or maybe some sort of giant runaway gel tablets, as they glide back and forth across the freeway.

KGW photo

One of the new trams unveiled Friday.

They look like the future. They are the future.

If you've driven along Interstate 5 through Portland in the past six months, you've probably wondered what in the world was going on near construction of the high-rise condos in the South Waterfront District. What is that bizarre, futuristic looking steel tower by the freeway? And what are those overhead cables for?

They're for you -- so you can ride from Oregon Health & Science University's Center for Health & Healing, which opened along the waterfront in October, up to OHSU's main campus on Marquam Hill.

Two-hundred seconds.

That's how long it takes, rising or descending at a whopping 22.7 mph. Might not seem so fast, but since the two sleek Swiss-made silver cabins of the $57 million Portland Aerial Tram are part of a tramway unlike any other in Pacific Northwest history, it's not a bad way to ride. Not to mention the 360-degree view from 500 feet up in the air on a cold, clear, crisp winter day.

"I've never seen so many smiles," says John Burnham, OHSU's tram operations coordinator, of the first day OHSU employees were allowed to ride, Dec. 15. The city-owned tramway opens at the end of this month.

"That was amazing," says an OHSU employee as she leaves the upper-tram terminal. "Amazing!"

It's so very European, this tram that takes you up, up and away, with a birds-eye view of not only Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens, but the Willamette River, downtown, the Rose Garden arena, anything and everything that is P-town.

The Portland Aerial Tram, or PAT, is billed as being like no other aerial tram ever. Anywhere. It is designed and constructed by Doppelmayr CTEC, a North American subsidiary of Switzerland-based Doppelmayr, in conjunction with the Portland Department of Transportation.

The tram is similar to New York City's Roosevelt Island Tramway and many all over Europe, but no evidence could be found of an aerial tram being constructed specifically for a business such as OHSU, Burnham says. All other trams like it are strictly commuter, tourist or ski-related trams, he says.

The Portland Aerial Tram is the key to OHSU's expansion across the freeway to the South Waterfront District and to the $2 billion of private investment in the district that includes the John Ross, a 32-story condo tower and two other high-rise condos, as well as the new OHSU building, OHSU officials say.

What was a more than 20-minute shuttle ride by van for doctors and other medical personnel is now just 3 minutes and 20 seconds.

The tramway is part of a 20-year OHSU master plan developed in 1999 that indicated the most conducive place for Oregon's only academic health center to expand was the South Waterfront along the Willamette River.

Not that the tramway has come without controversy and caused the Portland City Council more than a few headaches. With initial estimates saying its construction would cost $15 million, the price continued to rise until it hit its current tag of $57 million, 15 percent ($8.5 million) of which will be covered by South Waterfront property taxes. The majority of the cost, about 70.5 percent or $40 million, is being covered by OHSU, with the other 14.5 percent being covered by South Waterfront property owner fees.

Skyrocketing steel, concrete and labor costs are mainly to blame for the almost quadrupling of the tramway's construction price, according to news reports in The Oregonian.

Then there are the Corbett-Terwillinger and Lair Hill neighborhoods below the tramway. Residents have claimed that the tramway is not only an invasion of privacy but will also lower property values.

Residents have been offered rides on the tram before it opens to the public and OHSU has gone out of its way to hear their concerns, says Gerri Lutes, an OHSU spokeswoman. "They've commented that it's pretty quiet," she says.

While the cabins are now filled every five minutes with doctors in white medical coats and blue scrubs, nurses and construction workers, along with some OHSU employees who admit they're riding just for fun now and then, anyone will soon be able to ride for a public fare expected to be $4. The tramway has been built as a "public conveyance," Burnham says.

Two OHSU employees were sent to New York City last year to talk with operators of the Roosevelt Island Tramway, whose only mishap in 30 years came last April when commuters were trapped above the East River for seven hours when the tram, the only commuter aerial tramway in North America used strictly for mass transit, suffered a power failure.

It's really not that complicated, Burnham says, pointing to the cables, or "ropes," as they're called in tram terminology, from the deck at the upper-tram terminal. Each cabin is guided by three ropes, two "travel" ropes with a "haul" rope that runs underneath the travel ropes. The haul rope is the endless looping bi-cable. A 16-wheel carriage sits above each cabin and runs on top of the travel ropes.

"The weight of the car is simply pulling down on those travel ropes," Burnham says.

Two-car tramways like PAT use a "jig-back" system. A large electric motor is located at the bottom of the tramway. As the system pulls one cabin down, that cabin's weight helps pull the other cabin up. Each cabin has a few seats and bars to hang on to but is mostly standing room only. Each cabin holds up to 78 passengers and there's a "run" every five minutes.

The first test runs of PAT were conducted while the cabins were still wrapped in plastic. When members of the Portland media were invited to ride Dec. 14, Oregon was gearing up for one of its biggest windstorms in recent memory, with gusts reaching 100 mph on the coast and 50 mph in the valley. Nonetheless, PAT made a smooth run that day, Lutes says.