A New Spin for Riders of Palm Springs Tram

PALM SPRINGS — Talk about stepping out of the box--the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway is replacing its 35-year-old tram cars with circular capsules.

The floors of the new cars will rotate like the floor of a revolving restaurant with 360-degree views. The cars will be roomier and faster than the current ones. Even the tramway’s engine room will be a technological marvel worthy of tours where visitors wear hard hats, just like at Hoover Dam.

But for a little while longer, before the gift store is redone by someone who once designed retail space for Disney, before the Alpine Restaurant with its 1960s travel posters and dark carpet is remodeled, before the tramway embarks on its $15-million face lift, there is this quiet summer.

The overhaul begins next month and is expected to be completed sometime after Thanksgiving.

In the meantime, many people are taking advantage of a $30 unlimited summer pass, a break from the regular $17.65 fare, to bid repeated adieus to the old cars.

“It’s a nostalgia thing, like saying goodbye to an old friend. Plus, I’m an admitted cheapskate,” said Marty Brhel. The 51-year-old Riverside prosecutor stood at the front of a descending tram car for the 2 1/2-mile ride down Mt. San Jacinto, a trip he’s made many times over the past 12 years.

“I have ambivalent feelings,” he said, giving the bright red car a fond pat. “It’s like soaking in a bit of history before it’s gone, but I’m also curious to see the new cars.”

It is the push for something new more than anything else that is spurring the changes at the tramway, which is run by the Mt. San Jacinto Winter Park Authority.

Yes, some of the parts were reaching the end of their useful lives and it was going to be “like throwing money down a rat’s hole to replace and not modernize,” said Lee Reinhardt, the tramway’s assistant general manager. But the main concern was that the tramway, once the only show in town, now has competition.

“There’s 46 different attractions in the desert these days: water parks, zoos--heck, we even have windmill tours,” he said. “And when tour operators call us the first thing they ask is, ‘What’s new?’ ”

When the tramway opened in 1963, Palm Springs was still a small artists colony and the tram was labeled the eighth wonder of the world. Helicopter pilots flew some 23,000 missions without mishap, hauling the workers and supplies to build four towers and the 35,000-square-foot mountain station, which sits at 8,516 feet.

“A lot of helicopter pilots came and looked at that canyon and said, ‘No way.’ It was the first feat done exclusively using helicopters,” said Elaine Landell, owner of Landell’s Aviation in Desert Hot Springs, whose late husband, Don, was a pilot on the original project. “The whole city was gawking all the time.”

The vision for the tram was born in 1935. Francis F. Crocker, a young engineer on a trip to Banning, mopped his brow in the heat of the day and gazed longingly at the snow-capped peaks of Mt. San Jacinto. He began dreaming of a tram to “go up there where it’s nice and cool.”

He enlisted the aid of Earl Coffman, one of Palm Springs’ early civic leaders. Their plan was set back by politics, World War II and the Korean War before finally becoming a reality.

Today the helicopter finesse required to pluck off the tops of the towers and rig them for the new cars is considered “just all in a day’s work,” Reinhardt said. He’s the sort who considers it a plus that his job requires scaling granite peaks and dangling from helicopters.

He glows with the enthusiasm of a car collector displaying a spotless engine when he shows the gargantuan brake discs, backup engines and other parts waiting to be installed. The Swiss-made machinery is platinum-colored, with all rotating parts painted rubber-duck yellow. Sitting in the parking lot, the machinery looked like Ikea furniture, but a dozen times larger.

Reinhardt said the tramway will be the only one with revolving cars in North America and the largest of three in the world.

The new cars will have windows that reach to the floor so those knee-high to a grasshopper can see out without being hoisted by their armpits. The capacity for each car will still be 80 people, but the speedier cars will be able to make one more trip each hour than they do now.

The five-minute ride will become “more interactive, more of an experience; it won’t be just a ride up the mountain,” Reinhardt said. “It’s so exciting. How many times do you get a chance to be first?”

But not everyone riding the old cars shares Reinhardt’s delight.

“The passengers say things like, ‘Why do you want to make them spin? That’s crazy. We like things the way they are,’ ” said tram operator Raul Jimenez. “I tell them they won’t spin; they’ll rotate gently.”