St. Charles Line: January 2008 Archives

Perley A. Thomas streetcar 904 passing the Pickwick Club, at the corner of Canal St. and St. Charles Avenue.

The Pickwick Club is an all-male, all-white lunch/social club. The club was originally affiliated with the Mistick Krewe of Comus, the oldest Carnival organization in the city. Comus has been around since 1857, when their two-float parade was the first of its kind in New Orleans. While the official connection between the club and Comus was broken in the 1880s, the membership of both organizations is reputed to be closely linked. Nobody knows for sure, however, because neither the Krewe nor the club make their membership public.

That lack of openness was the subject of a 1991 ordinance passed by the New Orleans City Council. That body decreed that, to get a permit to use public facilities like streets, an organization had to show it did not employ discriminatory practices in determining its membership. Rather than make its membership list public, Comus, along with two other Carnival organizations (Momus and Proteus) withdrew from the parade lineup. Proteus returned several years later, but Comus and Momus have steadfastly refused to comply, even though Comus won a lawsuit against the city, validating their right to freedom of assembly.

The Pickwick Club building is often confused with the Boston Club, which is actually down the street. While the Pickwick Club is closely aligned with Comus, the Boston Club is aligned with the School of Design, the organization which names Rex, King of Carnival, and parades on Mardi Gras morning. The Boston Club (which gets its name from the card game, not the city) is actually down the street. Prior to the 1991 blow-up, the Pickwick Club erected reviewing stands in front of the club on Canal St. Rex would roll down St. Charles and turn left onto Canal St., in front of the club. The king's float would stop there, and Rex would toast his queen, who watched the festivities of the day from that vantage point. Since the passage of the 1991 ordinance, however, the School of Design switched venues for their court, and now the toasts take place at the Intercontinental Hotel, at St. Charles and Poydras.

A 400-series arch roof streetcar designed by Perley A. Thomas is in the middle of a parade, 1938. St. Charles was operating in belt service at that point in time (St. Charles outbound, Tulane inbound). One thing making me scratch my head is that the parade is going in both directions on St. Charles. On the contemporary parade route, Rex goes down the lake side of St. Charles, between Louisiana and Jackson, so they can toast at the Story home. The trucks that follow come down the river side for those blocks. Still, both sides go in the same direction. This looks like the float in the foreground is going uptown, will turn around somewhere, and then head back downtown.

But those are minor details in the Grand Scheme of Things. After all, parades are only a couple of weeks away!

After the very-successful ride of the Phunny Phorty Phellows on Monday night, a number of folks in Mid City wondered aloud (and on line) why this couldn't become a regular event, where the PPP start by City Park and end up somewhere Uptown. The short answer has three letters:

ADA

That's the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA has opened many, many doors to disabled folks that would never have been accessible to them without direct legislative help. It's complicated our streetcar lines a bit, though. Here's how it works:

St. Charles - The St. Charles line, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The strict interpretation of this designation is that the line must be preserved in the state it was when it was listed, in 1971. That means the route is from Carondelet and Canal Streets to S. Carrollton and S. Claiborne Avenues. The 35 900-series Perley A. Thomas streetcars that were operating in 1971 have been preserved and continue to operate on the line. NORTA (and NOPSI before them) is charged with making sure the line and the streetcars stay in good shape and operating.

ADA mandates that public transit be handicap-accessible, but this conflicts with the basic design of the 900s. They were built in 1923-1924, and wheelchair access wasn't an issue then. NORTA just can't cut holes in the sides of these vintage streetcars, so the line is exempt from the requirements of ADA.

Riverfront - The original Riverfront line opened in 1988, prior to ADA. It used three 900-series streetcars rescued from other places in the country after the Canal line was converted to bus operations in 1964. The line also used two Melbourne W2 cars that have center-opening doors. The stops on Riverfront are raised platforms, so a rider in a wheelchair could go up the ramp and board one of the Melbourne cars. When the line was re-worked in 1997, it was expanded to double-track and converted from standard (railroad) gauge to wide gauge. The changes were so significant that the line came under the ADA microscope. ADA activists were not satisfied with every other streetcar on the line being handicapped-accessible and insisted that all cars be in compliance. That meant the vintage 900s could not be used. NORTA decided to design a new class of arch roof streetcars. The 400-series Riverfront streetcars look very much like their green cousins, but they're equipped with wheelchair lifts.

Canal - The 2000-series Von Dullen cars also have wheelchair lifts on both sides, making them fully ADA-compliant.

The storm disrupted regular streetcar operations. Because of the severe damage to the ADA-compliant streetcars in the NORTA fleet, there's just no way to offer proper service until the 400s and 2000s are rebuilt. ADA isn't the only thing in suspended animation at the moment. Since the wiring and track on St. Charles were damaged by the storm, the 900s couldn't return to service on the historic line immediately. NORTA received approval to run the 900s on the Canal line, where the infrastructure was essentially intact in spite of the flooding in Mid City. So, for the last two years, the streetcars have been operating in an environment of regulartory anarchy.

NORTA anticipates that the the Von Dullens will be back on Canal this summer. When that happens, the regulatory limbo that currently exists goes away and the pre-storm rules have to return. That means green streetcars on St. Charles, red ones everywhere else. Last Monday's PPP ride can't happen under the pre-storm rules. Under those rules, the 900s that the PPP boarded at Beauregard Circle can't operate on "revenue runs" off the St. Charles line. They're not ADA-compliant, and the Canal line must maintain that compliance.

The 400-series Riverfront cars have wheelchair lifts, so they can operate on revenue runs on Canal. When they get to Carondelet and St. Charles, however, they run into a problem. The 400s didn't operate on the St. Charles line in 1971, so they're not on the NRHP list. If NORTA operates a 400 on St. Charles for money, the line would lose its ADA exemption. That would create a situation similar to what happened on Riverfront, and the 35 vintage 900s would no longer be able to operate on the line.

So, even though there now are track and electrical connections between the three streetcar lines, that connection between Canal and St. Charles exists solely for the purpose of streetcar maintenance. Once the Von Dullens return home to Canal Street, the 900s will go back to their barn on Willow St. The red cars will be able to switch onto St. Charles to return back to the shop at Carrollton Station, but they can't do it for a buck

I have a modest proposal for the people of Mid City: If the Phunny Phorty Phellows decide to return to their traditional Uptown ride next year on Twelfth Night, charter a 400-series car and have one of your own! My guess is that the PPP will consider imitation to be the sincerest form of flattery. They're folks who like streetcars and like Mid City. Even if the party run was just from Beauregard Circle to the Canal barn, it would return some of the "neighborhood" feel of Carnival back to the area. The days of true "neighborhood" parades are long gone, as NOPD and City Hall have jammed almost every krewe into Uptown routes. Endymion still gets a pass on this, but Endymion is so huge that it has a life of its own. A Twelfth Night streetcar run on Carrollton and Canal would be something fun for everyone in Mid City, and we at CanalStreetCar (dot com) would gladly work with y'all to make it happen.

When driving an automobile in New Orleans, the last thing you want to do is get in a wreck with one of our streetcars. You're going to lose. There's no ifs, ands or buts about that, you're going to lose. This is a shot of 910 at Carrollton Station, being repaired after being involved in an accident. The front bumper has been removed to be rebuilt.

The most common auto-versus-streetcar accident that happens is when a driver doesn't look behind them when turning into the neutral ground. It's not something we do in other parts of town, because you don't expect something to come at you from the middle of the neutral ground on, say, Elysian Fields or Napoleon Avenues. Thing is, on Canal Street and St. Charles Ave., that's exactly what might happen. NORTA put out reminder signs weeks ahead of the return of the St. Charles line, to remind uptown drivers that their streetcars are back and to look out for them.

I've never thought about the legal morass that a streetcar accident must be until just now. I've actually been on a NOPSI bus that was involved in a minor traffic accident, and even that was a paperwork nightmare for the bus driver. In the case of streetcar-versus-auto accidents, the odds are more likely that the auto driver is going to be at fault and will be cited. I don't know if lthe average auto insurance policy can even begin to cover the damage one of these wrecks can cause to a streetcar. And we're not even talking about the damage to the auto yet. When there's enough damage to a streetcar that it's got to go back to the shop, you should see the other guy! We don't have a good photo of a modern accident (if anyone's got one, please share it with us), but one of my favorite photos from my book, which ran as a Feature Photo here in 2004, is "Never Argue With A Streetcar," from 1914.

Happy New Year to everyone!