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October 9, 2007
The Cemeteries Terminal - RTA's Current Proposal - Canal Boulevard
Now faced with 100-120 City Park Avenue unavailable and an alternate plan that is totally unsafe, RTA has developed a third proposal for the Cemeteries Terminal, to move it to the first two blocks of Canal Boulevard:
The right side of this drawing is the head of Canal Street at City Park Avenue. The proposal calls for the streetcar track to continue into the City Park Avenue intersection, turning right, then turning left onto Canal Blvd. Once on Canal Blvd, the streetcar terminal would merge with the existing bus terminals:
From the perspective of rider/pedestrian safety, it doesn't get much better than this. The problem with this site isn't with riders, though, it's with automobiles.
This is a ground-level view of City Park Avenue at Canal Blvd:
The shelter in the foreground is where Jefferson Transit buses for the Veterans and Metairie lines currently terminate. Streetcars would turn onto City Park like the truck in the background of this photo is doing. The tracks would cross the traffic lanes to the inside line so they could do a reverse-S into the Canal Blvd. neutral ground.
The streetcars would turn just behind where the white car in the center of this photo is turning.
The above photo illustrates the biggest problem with this proposal - automobile traffic. There are traffic signals at City Park Avenue and Canal Street, but just stop and yield signs at City Park and Canal Blvd. To allow the streetcars to leave Canal Street, turn onto City Park, then turn into the Canal Blvd. neutral ground, traffic signals would have to be installed at Canal Blvd. and City Park. They'd have to be synchronized with Canal Street and City Park, and the streetcars would have to have their own cycle long enough for them to pull out and make the two turns.
There are more things that can go wrong with this configuration than when a football quarterback throws a pass. I'm no traffic engineer, though, so I invite comment from others on what this looks like to you.
The Lakeview Civic Improvement Association (LCIA) is the most vocal opposition to this proposal. (Memo to LCIA: tell the folks in your group who use the phrase "those people' to stay home when you have your next meeting on this issue. They don't make a very good first impression on visitors.) The group opposes this plan on the grounds that the construction will disrupt the intersection too much, and the teminal's location will be a huge disruption to the Lakeview neighborhood. They also argue that it will increase crime in the area, ostensibly because "those people" will be in their neighborhood. News flash for y'all: They're already there:
This is the existing bus terminal on Canal Blvd. The Esplanade/Jackson line, Canal Blvd line, and the Louisiana line terminate here. Canal streetcar riders disembark on Canal and walk around the corner to catch the inbound Esplanade bus near the JeT shelter on City Park Avenue. If there's a bad element amongst those riders, they're already in your neighborhood.
I also don't buy the "neighborhood disruption" argument. Greenwood Cemetery is to the immediate right in the above photo. I don't think the residents of Greenwood much care if the streetcar parks next to them. On the left, from the corner, is an empty lot (the old gas station), an abondoned commercial building, The Bulldog pub, a convenience store, and more abandoned commercial property (the old K&B/Rite Aid drugstore). Unless the neighbors think that the streetcar will drop off rowdies who want to have a beer at The Bulldog, there's really not much here to disrupt.
Still, the traffic concerns trump everything as far as I'm concerned. This proposal is questionable on that basis alone.
NEXT: Another possibility?
Posted by YatPundit at October 9, 2007 11:16 AM
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