Roanoke City Councilman Bev Fitzpatrick wants visitors to the city to have "a transportation experience."

He sees them boarding a trolley downtown and riding it south on Jefferson Street, where they'll then board an "automated people mover" to ride up Mill Mountain.

So far there's no estimate on what a revival of the old incline railway that climbed the mountain in the early 20th century would cost, but enough members of the council saw merit in the idea on Monday to instruct city staffers to pursue more information.

"This is not something ... that we're going to go out tomorrow and build or you can get a ticket on for next week," said City Manager Darlene Burcham. "It's something in the long-range planning for the future of the city we thought we ought to take the time to investigate."

Two city staff members presented the council with three potential routes to go up the side of the mountain:

n The Ivy Trail/Old Incline, which would run from the end of Ivy Road up the northwestern side of Mill Mountain.

n Star Trail/Ninth Street Bridge, which would run up the northeastern side of the mountain.

n Jefferson Street/Old Incline, which starts near the intersection of Jefferson Street and Yellow Mountain Road before running parallel to the Ivy Trail route.

All of the proposed paths appear to cut a swath right through the city's comprehensive plan.

In 2006, the council voted to add the Mill Mountain Park Management Plan to the comprehensive plan, known as Vision 2001-2020.

The plan, put together under the supervision of the council-appointed Mill Mountain Advisory Committee, divides the mountain into several "management zones" according to use and topography.

All three paths cut through the largest zone, designated as a "natural resource protection zone." The zone covers the steepest slopes on all sides of the mountain, which "offer the greatest possibility of interesting and/or unusual plant communities" on the mountain, the plan says.

"Any development that involved large-scale tree removal on the mountain side would be highly visible and would contradict the expressed public desire to preserve the forested slopes of the mountain," the plan says under recommendations for the zone.

The incline idea also appears to be on a collision course with a recommendation last week by the board of the nonprofit Western Virginia Land Trust to place a conservation easement on most of Mill Mountain.

A conservation easement is a negotiated agreement that permanently restricts development and land use on a parcel.

The land trust, which facilitates conservation easements, has for years conducted a low-key campaign to place an easement on the mountain.

Councilwoman Gwen Mason was on the land trust board until recently, when she resigned because she knew the board was about to begin more actively lobbying the council.

Mason said Monday she had "fairly tepid" interest in the incline project.

"I'm happy to have the staff eyeball it some more and get some cost figures," Mason said, "but I'm, as you know, particularly interested in the conservation part of the mountain, so I don't want to commit to embracing this quite so enthusiastically."

Much of the attraction for council members seems to lie in the potential for bringing visitors up the mountain without building additional parking lots.

"To my knowledge this is the only way we will get mass numbers of people to go to the mountain and enjoy it and not have an associated infrastructure cost for parking," Fitzpatrick said. "This is to make money for the city. It's another kind of alternative for people who want to go somewhere and do something different."

Mayor Nelson Harris also offered his tentative support of the incline project.

"I think this is something we should continue to explore," Harris said.

If the council decides to pursue the incline, Burcham said, the city will almost certainly need to secure outside sources of funding, such as state or federal grants. The city's already paying to replace two high schools, is discussing building an amphitheater and has many other capital expenses looming.

The original Mill Mountain Incline opened on Aug. 14, 1910, with more than 1,500 passengers waiting for a ride, according to a timeline in the Mill Mountain Park Management Plan.

By the 1920s, it had been operating at a loss for many years, the plan says, and its fate was sealed when the automobile toll road opened in 1924.

In 1929, the incline was closed, and the next year, it was dismantled and sold for scrap.