For several years intrepid if not entirely rational cyclists have made a sport of taking their bicycles on MAX, getting off at the Zoo station, riding up the short hill to SW Fairview Boulevard, and then pedaling down Fairview at full speed, around the hairpin turns, then past the Japanese Garden and through Washington Park to Jefferson Street, where they can get on MAX and repeat the ride. This sport, which I'm told is carried on mostly at night without bicycle lights, is called "Zoobombing."
A Laquedem friend told me today that he's offended that the cars on the OHSU tram, which are intended to carry the ill and disabled and their doctors, are going to (he says) have room for only one wheelchair on each car. A few minutes later he mentioned something about sightseers not being able to ride the tram on Sundays, because (I think) it's not going to run on Sundays, and how they would have to travel by bicycle.
The light went on! Here's another benefit of the tram: it will provide an alternate venue for Zoobombing. The sporting crowd can drive with their bikes to North Macadam, park in the new parking structure, get on the tram with their bikes, be carried up to OHSU, and barrel down the hill past Duniway Park and back to NoMa to repeat the loop. This daredevil stunt, which I'll call 'SUbombing for the moment, may become so popular that OHSU will open a sports medicine clinic at the base of the tram on weekend evenings. The tram may yet serve a useful purpose.