My Main Way Of Getting To Work Is Now A Terrifying Nightmare

John Angelillo. Shutterstock Images.

SOURCE - In recent weeks, the Roosevelt Island tram has had several episodes in which it’s dramatically swayed while full of passengers — leaving commuters terrified and baffled.

“It was very scary,” Thomas Wiener, a 22-year-old masters student on the island’s Cornell Tech campus, told The Post of an experience he had on the tram on a day in September that wasn’t particularly windy. 

“I [was] thinking, ‘okay, if this keeps swinging like this, I think we would hit [the tower]. At the last second, the tram got jerked back into place,” said Wiener. “A lot of people, probably like a third of the people in the car, fell over.”

I love living on Roosevelt Island. It's the greatest place on Earth. It's a tiny island between Manhattan and Queens. Only around 13,000 people live there. It's one subway stop away from Manhattan but it still feels like you live in a small town. It only has one pizza place, one supermarket, etc. It's literally the best of both worlds.

It was great living here…at least until recently. They are currently rebuilding the train tracks for the F train and that's the only subway line that goes to the island. Because of that, we are forced to take the tram. If you don't know the tram, it's the red thing that is elevated by wires. Lots of people know it from the Spider-Man movie that came out in 2002.

With us relying on the tram more than ever, it shaking and bucking every week is not ideal. I have not yet had a trip where that happened. But, I have had times where is shifted oddly and made me think a little bit more about my eventual demise more than I wanted to on my way to work. 

Obviously, when we take public transportation we are very vulnerable. But, that's easy enough to forget or just go into denial over. This is really tough to do on the Roosevelt Island Tram because you clearly see not only the wires but the East River under you. If that ever snapped, that's a rough finish.

Now, this is all based on some irrational fear. There has never been an accident on the tram. The two trams did get stuck in the air 2006 for 11 hours which sounds awful. The trams themselves are pretty small. There are no bathrooms or food of any kind. It's only a 4 1/2 minute ride. There are not many frills. You have benches on each side of the tram and things you can hold on to that hang from the roof…and that's about it.

Look, the tram isn't horrible. It comes every 7 1/2 minutes and it's a beautiful view of the city. But it is a pain in the ass to then get off the tram just to get on a subway to get to work. That's annoying and I guess the earliest they'll have these tracks fixed is in April. That does suck. We really don't need these things to be shaking and swinging 250 feet in the air.