Mark Graves/Staff

Portland's aerial tram will close later this month for its most extensive maintenance project in its 12-year history.

Crews from June 23 through July 30 will work on four track ropes, the steel cables on which the tram cars ride to ferry nearly 10,000 riders between the South Waterfront and Marquam Hill every day.

The tram, which opened in 2006 and is city-owned, undergoes periodic maintenance throughout the year, but the previous longest closure lasted five days. This year’s closure is a $300,000 project and the first time extensive work will be done on the track ropes. Similar work will happen every 12 years.

“It’s a big deal,” said Brett Dodson, OHSU’s director of parking and transportation.

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The tram is a key transportation link for thousands of Oregon Health & Science University employees, students and staff -- but it’s also a popular tourist destination. It offers sweeping panoramas from atop the hill, and an estimated 15 percent of riders are tourists.

The tram isn’t just pretty, it’s effective. The two tram cars travel a distance of 3,300 feet on the three-minute journey, compared with a 30- or 45-minute ride on a shuttle bus.

It will still be business as usual for patients, Dodson said.

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OHSU will run shuttle buses between the South Waterfront and the hill between 5:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. on weekdays. A bike valet service at the bottom of the tram near the Willamette River, which draws 450 cyclists per day, will be split into three locations, including one at the top of the hill to encourage cyclists to ride all the way to the top.

Dodson said OHSU is trying to be creative and will have “ride leaders” who take off from the South Waterfront every 15 to 30 minutes to encourage cyclists who ride from the eastside to the riverfront campus to continue riding their bike instead of hopping on a shuttle bus.

OHSU has also pushed employees to use the Scoop carpooling service, which pairs staffers who drive their own vehicles and may live close to one another. Staff are also encouraged to walk, and OHSU has provided maps showing various routes.

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John Brady, Portland Bureau of Transportation director of communications, said the track rope project is the big one. Work on the roughly 2-inch cables won’t be dramatic to the outsider. Dodson said it will largely consist of “guys with torque wrenches” shifting roughly 150 feet of cable from the tower onto the tram route itself. The tram operators have a spool of more than 650 feet of cable to do future track rope projects every 12 years.

The city contracts with Doppelmayr, an Austrian-Swiss company that services cable cars and gondolas across the globe, to work on the tram. Dodson said about a dozen company officials will work with in-house tram mechanics on the project.

Here are the maps:

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