The 900s on Canal - Dangerous Precedent...

Perley A. Thomas Streetcar 914 on Canal Street (operating on the West End line)

The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) finds itself in a curious dilemma post-Katrina. Of the three streetcar lines in the city, two have minimal track/catenary damage but major streetcar damage. The third, the St. Charles line, has no streetcar damage whatsoever and serious track/catenary damage. Under most circumstances, the solution would be pretty simple: move the streetcars that run on St. Charles over to Canal Street and resume operations on Canal and on Riverfront.

There's one small catch to this plan: by law, the 900-series Perley A. Thomas streetcars that operate on St. Charles Avenue can't be moved from that line. Both the streetcars and the line itself are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Briefly, some background: The company operating streetcars in New Orleans from 1922 to 1983 was New Orleans Public Service, Incorporated (a division of the company that later became Entergy). In 1964, NOPSI, with approval from city government, discontinued streetcar operations on Canal Street, in favor of bus service. The deal was a compromise of sorts. NOPSI wanted to discontinue streetcars altogether, but preservationists, historians, and the residents of Uptown howled. The St. Charles Line is the oldest operating streetcar line in the country, and the citizens didn't want to lose it. Canal Street, on the other hand, is the transit hub of the city and the main street of downtown. Its streetcar right-of-way was ugly, unkept, and NOPSI pitched a serious marketing campaign to residents in Lakeview and Gentilly to entice them into accepting air-conditioned buses over the semi-convertible streetcars. In typical New Orleans fashion, a citizens group formed to try to save the Canal line, but it was too little, too late.

Preservationists got their compromise, and on May 31, 1964, the last streetcar to operate on Canal for almost forty years turned onto a preserved St. Charles line. Streetcar enthusiasts and uptown residents alike didn't trust NOPSI at all, and with good cause, so they continued to take steps to assure the continued preservation of the St. Charles line. Congress helped out in 1966 by creating the National Register, and by 1971, the St. Charles line was added to the Register.

A quick glance at the regulations governing the National Register reveal that it's set up to deal more with physical buildings, or neighborhoods of historic significance rather than moving property. The sections that deal with changes and revisions, as well as removal of properties from the NR appear to be written with the idea that, once a property is on the NR, very extraordinary circumstances have to happen for changes to be made.

The closest provision in the regulations I can find that's appropriate to post-Katrina New Orleans is the section on moving property:

(1) Properties listed in the National Register should be moved only when there is no feasible alternative for preservation. When a property is moved, every effort should be made to reestablish its historic orientation, immediate setting, and general environment.

While I understand and appreciate the sentiment involved with wanting to get the streetcars back up and running, we should all approach re-location of 900-series operation with great caution. For openers, the current situation doesn't fit the criteria set forth by the NR for changing location. The St. Charles line will indeed be repaired and restored to its pre-Katrina operations. It's not like St. Charles is vanishing and there's no place for the 900s to go.

It's important to remember that Canal Street is not a heritage trolley line. It's a major urban transit line. The 2000-series Von Dullen cars, in spite of their outward similarities to the 900-series cars, are modern LRVs. They're designed to handle the high volume of riders on Canal Street. They're ADA-compliant, with wheelchair lifts on both sides. In short, they're not your grandfather's streetcars.

The other issue with changing anything having to do with the St. Charles line is the notion of trust. There was a time when NOPSI couldn't be trusted to look out for the best interests of the city. They were a for-profit company, heavily regulated, and always at odds with city government. Replacing their management of transit with RTA was one of the best moves the city/state ever did. We should not forget that history, however. One of the reasons preservationists in the late 1960s took steps to lock the St. Charles line into stone via the NR was to make sure someone thirty or forty years down wouldn't mess with the character of the line. I personally believe that RTA's goals and motives are more than in the best interests of the city and the streetcars, but then again, a lot of people in Rome thought naming Caesar dictator was a good idea at first, too.

So, what to do? I suggest the following:

1. RTA should obtain a waiver from the NPS to operate the 900s on the Riverfront line. Riverfront was envisioned in the mid-80s as a tourist attraction. The original idea was to have a small excursion line that would make it easy for conventioneers attending shows in the Morial Convention Center to get to the French Quarter. In fact, until the Canal streetcars returned, Riverfront was not even integrated into the RTA system. You had to pay a separate fare to ride the 400-series cars, and no transfers were available. In spite of the overwhelming popularity of the Riverfront line and its subsequent expansion, the line's mission never changed. It's all about tourists. It will be a lot easier to obtain waivers from both the NPS and the DoJ to operate the 900s on Riverfront. Since disabled folks don't rely on Riverfront as essential transportation, RTA won't have to go another fifteen rounds with the DoJ over ADA-compliance.

2. RTA should acquire some double-ended PCC cars to restore operations on Canal until the Von Dullen cars can be repaired. Bus service on Canal will have to continue until a majority of the 2000-series are complete, but streetcars of any kind would be good as a tourism promotion. Riding a streetcar of any design from the CBD to Mid-City and City Park would be more fun than a bus. Perhaps a trolley museum or two could loan a couple to RTA.

3. RTA should be thinking out of the box, just like the rest of New Orleans. With all the re-building and re-thinking that's going on in New Orleans, expansion of streetcar use should be always be considered. The guys at Carrollton Station spent most of last year re-building car #29, the last Ford, Bacon & Davis single-truck streetcar. It wouldn't be that hard for them to build new replicas of that model. Single-truck streetcars wound through a lot of neighborhoods in the city until the 1930s. They're small and easily to maneuver. What better time to rip up streets to lay down streetcar track than when nobody's living there anyway? This is an idea off the top of my head while sitting here, but it's an example of the sort of brainstorming everyone should be doing.