Seventeen weeks after the Roosevelt Island Tramway shut down for a major maintenance project – supposed to be finished by Christmas – the system will return to service Monday morning with the 6:00 o’clock trip.

The State Department of Labor gave it a “go” late Thursday.

When it finally restarts, it won’t be a moment too soon for the Tram’s 20 employees, most of whom have been laid off since December 21, or for the Island’s Manhattan commuters, who have had to forsake the Tram’s dramatic and ever-changing vistas of the East River for the monotony, clatter and recurring late-night stench of the F train.

The shutdown, prolonged by mechanical mistakes and failures and by bureaucratic entanglements, came on the heels of a period in which Island residents had to demonstrate, once again, their devotion to the Tram.  Threatened with a reduction in the hours of operation, residents rallied last summer to persuade the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation to back off on a proposal to reduce service and cut expenses, even though paid ridership has dropped in recent years and the Tramway’s deficit has widened to nearly $1 million.

The current impasse moved toward a solution on Wednesday, when personnel from the engineering services unit of the State Department of Labor’s Division of Health & Safety gathered in the rain to conduct a full-load brake test of the Tram cabins.  The cabins were loaded with 10 tons of weights, the equivalent of 125 people weighing 160 pounds apiece – the cabin’s capacity.  Red Blomer, the president of American Tramways Inc. of Watertown, New York, and three of his Tramway employees loaded the 50-pound weights on the Island side – a job that is typically done by about 10 workers, according to workplace sources.

The youthful-looking Blomer, wearing blue jeans and a sweatshirt, is used to hands-on work, having led various repair projects here in the past.  And the State inspectors were in their accustomed role, too, checking out a new 1,000-meter haul cable that had been delivered from Europe on March 5, replacing one mistakenly cut about eight feet too short in mid-December.

Everything looked to be clear sailing, a far cry from the situation in January, when American Tramways, a unit of the Dopplmayr Group of Austria, appeared to throw New York’s engineers into a tizzy with a proposal to modify the haul rope connection, thus preserving the shortened cable.

Weeks went by without a State decision, even though the solution was prepared by the same Swiss engineer who had designed the Tram in the mid-’70s.  (Doppelmayr has absorbed the aerial transportation business of Von Roll, a Swiss company that built the Tram.)  Finally, at a RIOC Board meeting last month, Blomer said he had ordered a new cable after all.

“It was and it wasn’t a so-called surprise,“ said Patrick Stewart, a resident member of the RIOC Board, who characterized the Labor Department in this instance as “a bureaucracy operating in an area where they have little expertise; they were extremely cautious.”

“If I’m the commissioner of labor, I do not want to approve something and have the damn thing crash,” Stewart said.  Given this scenario, he said, Blomer’s decision to give up on the State approval process, which included a request for review by a third-party engineer, was simply a prudent business decision.

“I know the direction of the Board was that we required RIOC to make absolutely sure this thing is safe, and the general sentiment of the Board was that the jury-rigged cable was probably not appropriate,” Stewart said.

His comments were similar to those of David Kraut, another resident Board member.  “Our patience was running out, and if Mr. Blomer had not gone ahead and purchased new cable, I believe we would have told him to,” he said.

The Division of Safety and Health has jurisdiction over the Tram because of its responsibility to regulate workplace safety.  It also governs ski lifts, carnival rides, window-cleaning scaffolds, elevators, and large tents.  Betsy McCormack, the Labor Department’s director of communications, said that the department had still been trying to find another engineer when news came of American Tramways’ decision.  “We were unaware that the cable had been ordered,“ she said.  She also said that “no written recommendations or analysis was ever completed by the Engineering Services Unit” on the company’s proposal.

Given previous instances of State delays in dealing with Tramway matters, Kraut said, “no one should have been surprised that the State Department of Labor was in no hurry to deal with this matter.  But this is hindsight.”

The Tram’s employees, however, were blindsided.  Although five members of the crew have been called back to help with maintenance work in the past several weeks, most have been trying to get along on $400 a week in unemployment compensation.  The employees, members of the International Union of Operating Engineers, have never had to deal with seasonal unemployment, and stop-gap medical insurance costs $675 per month.

RIOC has offered to help the workers recoup some of their out-of-pocket losses, but negotiations with the company have not been successful, say the workers.  They have filed grievances seeking back pay, medical benefits and the loss of wages.

As the haul rope installation proceeded after March 5, RIOC has said mechanical problems with a large winch further prolonged the work, possibly as much as four days, but this could not be confirmed with Blomer.

The State’s permit process was still running its course late this week.  The Engineering Services Unit’s inspection was concluded by mid-day Thursday.  “Thus far, all is proceeding in accordance with the code rule,“ McCormack said.  “Once the load test is complete, our Industry Inspection folks will review the documentation.”  The division’s Industry Inspection Bureau would then issue a permit to American Tramways to resume service.  The ultimate decision will be up to RIOC, which has said it will follow the  State’s recommendation.

The current shutdown, if it lasts until Saturday, would equal the Tram’s 120-day grounding in 1980-81, which appears to have been the longest before now.  At that time, the Tram was closed for maintenance on November 7, 1980, for a haul rope replacement.  Judith Berdy, the Island’s historian, said service resumed on March 7, but only after the cable had been dropped twice, on December 2 and December 19, 1980, disrupting traffic over wide portions of the Upper East Side.