New Orleans — Canal Line Nearly Ready

Rail Transit Online, October 2003  

Dec. 6 has been designated as dedication day for the first segment of the Canal Street streetcar line, although revenue service could actually begin about 10 days earlier.  A typically New Orleans party is planned at the corner of Canal and Baronne streets, and local restaurateurs and merchants are being asked to host celebrations at various stops.  Meanwhile, contractors are racing to complete last-minute tasks, including building passenger shelters, replacing sidewalks, repaving Canal Street and landscaping the neutral ground (median) where the tracks have been placed.  Nineteen of the 24 new replica vintage trolleys being built in the Regional Transit Authority’s Carrollton Shops for the new line were finished by mid-September.  But their maintenance base at the A. Philip Randolph Operations Facility on Canal Street remains incomplete, requiring RTA to store 10 of the new streetcars under tarpaulins near the Uptown end of the Riverfront line.  The cars are similar in appearance to the historic Perley Thomas originals that operate the St. Charles line but are equipped with air conditioning and wheelchair lifts.  Overhead wire and track installation along the 3.1-mi. (5 km) route from St. Charles Avenue to City Park Avenue was also wrapped up in mid-September, allowing the start of testing on the traction power system.  Still underway is work on a one-mile (1.6 km) branch on North Carrollton Avenue to City Park at Beauregard Circle, which RTA capital projects director Don Preau says should be completed in late February.  The $161-million project has been delayed nearly two months by unusually heavy rain during the spring and summer.