The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority's struggle to get the city's transit system back up and running has been slow and sluggish for the last two years. The city's main bus service and storage site, the A. Philip Randolph SIS facility on Canal Street, was flooded with several feet of water. Not only did this ruin the "red ladies," the 400- and 2000-series streetcars, but it ruined dozens of buses as well as creating a hazmat situation because all of the oil, fluids, etc., in the service bays of the garage spread all over the facility.
Two years later, Randolph is cleaned up and operational, with the 900-series streetcars operating out of the Canal barn in the rear of the facility. The green streetcars running on Canal has returned the "tourism" face to the system, and that presence will expand when the repairs and upgrades to the St. Charles line are completed next year.
Bus transit, on the other hand, has been problematic. Ridership has dropped from around 3 million per month prior to the storm to 550K-575K now. While the decrease in local population is certainly a huge factor in that drop, the lack of operational buses contributes as well. Consultants hired by RTA lay the picture out clearly:
Ideally, the RTA should have 100 fully-functioning buses to serve its reduced customer base, officials from Booz Allen and GCR & Associates said. The consultants said that number should increase to 122 buses by next year and to 240 buses by 2012, when they expect ridership to return to pre-Katrina levels on many routes.
That's a tall order, given that RTA has about 60 operational buses, which are a combination of their own equipment that survived the storm and buses that have been loaned or donated to them. RTA has FEMA money that will enable them to purchase another 12 buses. There's still a lot of work to be done.
