Baltimore isn't known for its skiing, and tourists don't flock to the Inner Harbor for snow-capped mountains. But two entrepreneurs are looking past the obvious and toward the sky. They're looking for ski lifts.
They see eight-person cable cars soaring up to 95 feet above city streets. They picture sightseers and commuters, their faces pressed against Plexiglas windows for a view. They think, with a little luck, that a ski-lift style gondola might be the next big thing in urban transit.
Crazy? Maybe. Maybe not.
Baltimore brothers Trey and Peter Winstead are getting attention - and money - for their three-year-old dream of stringing a cable-car system a little more than a mile, from the Baltimore Convention Center to the western edge of Fells Point.
The $30 million project - the latest in a long line of transit ideas proposed for the area -could ease downtown traffic, the Winsteads say, and provide a respite for tired tourists. At 12 mph, the high-wire trip would take 6 1/2 minutes.
Gondolas would stop at the end of Thames Street, Pier Six, the World Trade Center and the Convention Center. The brothers envision a $6 day pass.
"This idea was a pipe dream," said Peter Winstead, 27, who describes himself as the one who grounds in reality his brother's out-there ideas. "But we also thought maybe it could work. While it's not the typical way to do transportation in urban environments, it could really pay off."
Last month, the city Board of Estimates sponsored a $38,000 state grant for the Winstead brothers to study potential ridership for the enclosed, climate-controlled cars.
Construction costs would be raised from private investors, the brothers said.
A similar system shuttles tourists from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island in New York City, and Philadelphia has poured the foundation for a lift that would run to Camden, N.J., though that project has been stalled for years.
The Baltimore Lift, as the Winsteads call it, would be distinctive in its style and in the mix of tourists and commuters its creators would hope to attract. Twenty-two towers would hold the cable and 97 cars aloft.
"It's long overdue," said Bob Brown, 48, a Hyatt Regency sales manager who lives in Baltimore. "Of course there would be people willing to use it."
Even if Baltimoreans accept a downtown cable car system, the approval of a bevy of planning and transportation officials - which ones is not clear - would be required.
