Long-time readers of the Antiplanner will remember Portland’s aerial tram, which went 280 to 1800 percent over budget, depending on what you consider the original budget to have been. While Portland taxpayers paid about $8 million of the cost, most of the $57 million cost was covered by the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU), which was at one end of the tramway.
OHSU said it was going to anchor the other end of the tram with a major biotech center, creating hundreds of jobs and $1 billion in annual sales by 2006. It persuaded the Portland city council to pony up the $8 million subsidy by saying that, if it did not get to build the aerial tram, it would put the biotech center in some other Oregon city.
