New Street Rail in NOLA - St. Claude Line

NOPSI/Perley A. Thomas streetcar 1003 on St. Claude Avenue in the 1930s, during the last massive government stimulus program.

The folks at the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority have been working on street railway expansion for years. Just as the Canal line was coming on line in 2004, NORTA was working on the original proposal to bring back service to Bywater and the Ninth, resurrecting the "Desire" line.

(more after the jump)

The storm put a serious kink in those plans, since there's no longer a Ninth Ward to service. In the four years since the storm, NORTA has been working to re-package the Desire proposal, considering ideas such as running to Press St. or the Industrial Canal, and possibly even running an extension of the Riverfront line further downriver.

The Bush Administration's prosecution of two wars put a serious damper on street railway projects. The main obstacle was a policy change in federal matching funds. When the Canal line was developed in the 1990s, the FTA-to-Local funding ratio was 80/20; Bush's people changed that to 50/50. That made it all but impossible for cash-strapped local agencies like NORTA to bring their plans to fruition.

In the current world of economic collapse and stimulus, however, things have changed. With federal money being pumped into a number of areas, NORTA's expansion ideas have a new lease on life. Let's examine the three lines being proposed, starting with the return of the St. Claude line.

The St. Claude proposal (outlined in red on the above map) is for a line that would start at Canal and N. Rampart Streets, turn onto St. Claude Ave., and continue down St. Claude to Press St. This is essentially a scaled-back version of the Desire proposal NORTA made in 2004.  The run down N. Rampart from Canal St. to Esplanade Ave. covers the northern boundary of the French Quarter.  This would be a boon to commuters and tourists alike. 

From Esplanade Avenue, the line would go down N. Rampart St.to Elysian Fields Ave., offering service to the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood.  This is another boon to commuters in a very-popular residential area.  The proposal also includes a spur line running on Elysian Fields Ave., from N. Rampart to the river, then turning to connect with the end of the Canal line at the French Market terminal (the rose-colored route on the map above).  For the Marigny, this is huge, because it enables residents to connect with the Canal line, giving them access to the entire NORTA transit system once they reach Canal St.

The 2004 Desire proposal ran further down into the Upper Ninth Ward, to Desire St.  This St. Claude proposal terminates at Press St.  The reason is the train tracks you see just to the right of Press.  Those tracks connect the riverfront with the big Norfolk Southern rail yard just north of St. Claude.  The problem is not grade crossing safety, as many have speculated, but the height issues of the overhead electrical wiring needed for street rail operations.  Norfolk Southern operates various modern-style railroad cars on that trackage, particularly the three-decker auto transport cars.  Those cars have a height clearance above the trolley wire.  This was a major sticking point in getting the railroad's buy-in to the 2004 proposal.  NS wanted NORTA to build an overpass on St. Claude, and that just wasn't going to happen.  By terminating the line before the railroad tracks, this hurdle has been eliminated.  The terminal at Press would be similar to those Beauregard Circle at City Park and S. Carrollton and S. Clairborne Avenues on the St. Charles line.  There's no need for turnaround trackage, since all New Orleans streetcars are double-ended.

At Canal Street, the St. Claude line would be connected to the existing Canal tracks via two wye switches.  This is similar to the configuration currently implemented at the Canal Station streetcar barn at Canal and Salcedo Streets.

NORTA is proposing two other lines, one linking the Morial Convention Center to Canal Street, and another connecting Canal with the Union Passenger Terminal on Loyola Avenue.  We'll continue tomorrow and Thursday with breakdowns of those proposals, wrapping up on Friday with a discussion of how the proposal is to be financed.