New Orleans Regional Transit Authority
The RTA officially came into being in 1979, but the history of public transit in New Orleans reaches much further back in time, into the early 1800’s when Mississippi River trade had made New Orleans the U.S.’s third largest city. Streetcars ruled the urbanizing roadways for over 100 years and still remain an essential icon of New Orleans. After World War II, however, buses eventually supplanted most streetcar lines, and they extended the reach of public transport to the newer parts of the city being settled. Hurricane Katrina’s levee failures in 2005 decimated most of the RTA’s assets. Since then, the agency has been reborn, with an entirely new fleet of buses, new streetcar lines under construction, and new ambitions for serving the people of New Orleans.
The Uptown neighborhood called Carrollton wasn’t always part of New Orleans. It used to be its own entity, and plantations and farmland separated it from what was New Orleans proper at the time, neighborhoods such as the French Quarter, the Treme, and the American Sector (today the CBD and Warehouse District). To connect these two population centers, in 1835 an entity called the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad Company (NOCRR) laid down railway tracks that followed the bend of the Mississippi River.
These new tracks marked the beginning of the streetcar line that today runs down St. Charles Avenue. It is considered the oldest continuously operating passenger street railway in the world. When it first went into service, however, there weren’t too many streets and the train transported freight as well as passengers. Not long after the line’s inception, in the 1850s another company founded a railway line to run up Canal Street towards Lake Pontchartrain where resorts and recreational areas were cropping up. In the 1860s, even more streetcar companies came on the scene, in total operating around thirty lines.
In the early days, the trains were steam powered, but operators received many complaints. The engine noise and whistles scared farm animals and sparks from the flue burned holes in ladies’ dresses and men’s hats. As New Orleans became more populated, steam power grew less and less desirable for urban use.
Railway operators began to use horses or mules to pull the cars, but this solution wasn’t ideal either. The areas between the rails were always muddy, making the task difficult for the animals. Wooden platforms were laid down to give the animals better footing, but upkeep was costly. Other negatives included the costs of horse feed and stabling and the fact that horses moved slowly and sometimes fell ill. Streetcar operators kept looking for better sources of power. Experiments included superheated water, ammonia, overhead cables linked to a pulley system, and a device called the Lamm fireless engine. Even humans were used between 1866 and 1871, especially during horse epidemics.
Other streetcar companies in other cities around the country were beginning to use overhead electric power, but the New Orleans City Council approved its use relatively late, in 1891. When overhead electrical lines were finally approved, the NOCRR extended the Carrollton line to Jeanette Street, changed the line’s name to St. Charles, and contracted the Berlin Iron Bridge Co. of Berlin, Connecticut, to build the Carrollton streetcar barn that’s still in use today. In addition, at Napoleon Avenue and Tchoupitoulas Street, the NOCRR constructed a power station for the electrified line and routed the power up to St. Charles Avenue. This facility is also still in use today by the RTA.
With electrification of the St. Charles line, the NOCRR added electric power to other lines it already had in operation and embarked on new line construction; other streetcar companies followed suit. By 1899, mule and horse propulsion was a thing of the past. The move toward electrification also caused some weaker operators to fold and led to consolidation in the industry. No matter who ran the lines, streetcars were the lifeblood of the city. By and large, most lines passed through Canal Street and old pictures of the area show the neutral ground clogged with streetcars along four sets of rails with crisscrossing tracks.
In the 1920’s, the population of New Orleans had grown to around 400,000 people, and the extensive network of privately owned streetcar lines allowed the bustling city to function. Although some streetcars companies had consolidated, the system remained fragmented. For passengers, this patchwork meant confusion about routes and timetables, inconsistent quality, varying rules and regulations, and often the need to pay multiple fares to get to a single destination. Streetcar operators themselves suffered from the inefficiencies of the fragmented system.
Also during this era, the system of providing gas and electricity to New Orleans residences and businesses was an equally patchwork undertaking by many private companies. The New Orleans city government formed an organization called New Orleans Public Service, Inc. (NOPSI) in the early 1920s that would consolidate the publicly essential services of transportation and power within a single entity. This period of time also marked the peak of the New Orleans streetcar, with some 225 miles of track throughout the city.
The NOCRR sold itself to NOPSI in September of 1922. Not long after, NOPSI placed an order to a North Carolina company called Perley Thomas for new, larger streetcars to run on the St. Charles line. At the cost of $15,000 each, the new streetcars were modernized and could carry 52 seated passengers. These Perley Thomas streetcars are the same ones that run on the St. Charles line today.
NOPSI began to operate the first buses in New Orleans in 1924, but the period after World War II was when buses truly started to displace streetcar lines. Buses had several advantages over streetcars. To keep up with changes in rider usage, bus routes could be altered whenever needed, but creating new streetcar lines required expensive construction costs and then ongoing upkeep. Buses also appealed to the public as a new and modern form of transport, but streetcars seemed to be fusty relics of an older age. In addition, many powerful American companies—from tire makers to auto manufacturers to the members of the oil industry—put their financial muscle behind buses nationwide.
As streetcar lines gradually disappeared from New Orleans, locals and visitors alike romanticized them, viewing streetcars as emblematic of the city and even life itself. When living in New Orleans, playwright Tennessee Williams wrote that he could hear “that rattle trap streetcar named Desire running along Royal and the one named Cemeteries running along Canal, and it seemed the perfect metaphor for the human condition.” His play A Streetcar Named Desire was first staged in 1947, not long before the line that ran to Desire Street was closed down.
Soon enough, only two streetcar lines remained in New Orleans, the Canal Street line “named Cemeteries” and the St. Charles line. Despite the protests of many citizens, NOPSI shut down the Canal Street line in 1964. After that, preservationists banded together with even stronger determination to prevent the dismantling of the only streetcar line left in the city, which also happened to be the original one.
On August 4, 1973, the preservationists succeeded in listing the St. Charles streetcar line on the National Register of Historic Places, which is administered by the National Park Service under the Department of the Interior. Thanks to this listing, federal law mandates that the style and integrity of the Perley Thomas streetcars cannot be altered in any way; they must remain true to their 1923 appearance. The St. Charles route is also protected as is the historic Carrollton barn, where today RTA craftsmen restore and repair the antique cars and build new ones.
NOPSI (which later morphed into Entergy New Orleans) wasn’t the only utility company in the United States that delivered both electrical power and public transport. Like its peers across the nation, in the 1970s the agency found operating public transit to be burden and looked to rid itself of this public responsibility. The problem of course was if NOPSI shut down the public transit services, New Orleans citizens would have none at all. So in 1979, the Louisiana State Legislature established the Regional Transit Authority, and in 1983 the RTA became fully responsible for operating and maintaining all city bus routes and the St. Charles streetcar line.
The streetcars were dearly missed for sentimental and historical reasons. The New Orleans business community and tourism leaders also wished to see the return of streetcars because studies have proven that, much more so than bus lines, streetcar lines generate substantial financial benefit to the neighborhoods they service.
A citizen coalition in partnership with the Downtown Development District formed in the 1980s to return streetcars to New Orleans. The aim was to create a Riverfront line to serve the riverside of the French Quarter, the Convention Center, and downtown. The RTA reacquired some old Perley Thomas streetcars that had been sold by NOPSI and purchased other cars originally built in Melbourne, Australia. The Riverfront line went into service in 1988 with a refurbished, mismatched fleet. Meanwhile, RTA craftsmen constructed brand new streetcars modeled after the Perley Thomas model but with modern amenities like air conditioning and wheelchair accessibility. They were put into service on the Riverfront line in 1998 and are the ones still being used today.
Then the next major project, beginning in 2000, was to restore streetcars to Canal Street. All 24 streetcars used on the line were built at the Carrollton barn, although the propulsion systems were purchased from a Pennsylvania company. The Canal Street line returned to service in 2004, almost 40 years to the day of its 1964 disappearance.
In its 2005 devastation of New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina dealt powerful blows to every city institution, including the RTA. The RTA lost a majority of its buses and streetcars. Offices and maintenance facilities were wrecked. As it did to other New Orleans citizens, the storm dispersed employees and destroyed their homes. Nevertheless, in the face of great professional and personal adversity, the agency returned public transit to the streets within 60 days after the hurricane.
The challenges were many. All the Canal Street and Riverfront streetcars were destroyed. While the St. Charles streetcars themselves had survived, the infrastructure of the St. Charles line needed to be completely repaired. To service riders, the RTA assembled a rag-tag fleet consisting of the handful of buses that survived the flooding and generous but past-their-prime donations from other transit agencies. As the RTA is partially supported by sales tax revenue, the sharp population loss and the decline of tourism meant the agency had little money with which to fund operations. Some employees, many with years of experience and well-honed technical skills, never returned to New Orleans. The RTA personnel that did return worked in scattered temporary facilities and trailers.
During this time of recovery, residents of New Orleans embarked on an era of invigorated pride, fresh energy, and civic reform. The RTA positioned itself as a leading force in the revitalization of New Orleans with a goal to not only rebuild the beloved city but help recreate it. In due time, the organization overcame enormous challenges never before faced by any transit system in history and has emerged as a reborn organization.
The RTA’s bus fleet has been completely replaced with modern, brand-new vehicles that run on biodiesel fuel. The fleet also includes five new articulated, or “accordion,” buses for our most popular lines. Our paratransit fleet, which services disabled passengers, now features entirely new vehicles as well.
All flooded streetcars have been decontaminated and rebuilt, and the St. Charles line is fully operational. Furthermore, the RTA secured funding for two new streetcar lines now under construction, the Loyola Avenue line that connects the Union Passenger Terminal and Canal Street and a French Quarter line to run along Rampart Street into the Bywater neighborhood. In addition, the RTA renovated its main headquarters and consolidated all key administrative offices within it in 2010.
In order to communicate the spirit of the new RTA to the public, the RTA created a new look with a fresh logo, new bus exteriors, bright new shelters, and more. As part of this marketing initiative, the RTA developed a number of tools to make using the transit system easier for our riders, including everything on this website you’re using now.
With its long and storied history, the RTA is on the cusp of a new era. We are putting in effect a plan that includes increased service and mobility, more efficient operations, and the integration of transit across the greater New Orleans region.
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