Last week was the Antiplanner’s first visit to New Orleans since Katrina. What I remember from my previous visit in 2002 was a thriving area centered around the French Quarter filled with overweight tourists eating fatty foods at overpriced restaurants. (I remember weighing myself as soon as I got home to see how many pounds I would have to shed through hard cycling.)
Yet all but the most brain-dead tourists could catch glimpses of another city: run-down buildings, poor people — mostly black — many of whom may have considered themselves lucky to have menial jobs in the tourist hotels and restaurants. At the time, the city was building a new Canal Street Streetcar line for the tourists even as it was cutting back on bus service to the low-income neighborhoods: bus vehicle miles dropped by 12 percent between 1999 and 2003, while streetcar service grew by 40 percent. The 3 million new streetcar riders hardly made up for the lost 6 million bus trips, especially since the streetcar riders were “choice” riders while the bus riders were transit-dependent.
Thousands of homesites in the Lower Ninth Ward remain vacant today.
Katrina transformed the region’s demographics. In 2000, New Orleans had 485,000 people and the urban area had just over 1 million. In 2008, says the Census Bureau, the city had only 312,000 and the urban area less than 800,000. Most of the departed are poor blacks, many of whom found refuge from the flooding in Houston and decided to stay in a city that had better schools and less corruption.
A couple of the architecturally designed homes build by Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation.
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The 2000 Census indicates that around 60 percent of homes in the Lower Ninth Ward were owner-occupied, and my drive-through suggests that far fewer than 60 percent of the homes in the area are occupied today. This suggests that many poor homeowners, as well as renters, simply walked away from the daunting task of rebuilding despite the city’s Road Home program.
Streetcars are back in business, most buses are not.
Flickr photo by abundantc.
While we won’t get accurate housing data from the 2010 census for another year or two, we know what the city did to its transit system after Katrina. On one hand, it spent tens of millions of dollars rebuilding the streetcar lines for the tourists, and recently received another $45 million in federal funds for a new line. Meanwhile, the city offers less than 25 percent of the bus service it provided in 1999, and ridership has fallen by around 80 percent.
Of course, this is a chicken-and-egg problem: transit-dependent people won’t return to a neighborhood that has no bus service, but why offer bus service to a neighborhood that has no people? Yet the transit system merely reflects New Orleans’ good-old boy priorities: favor the wealthy whites and tourists and ignore the poor blacks.
A couple of good-old boys attending my New Orleans presentation last Thursday left very upset with my conclusion that the streetcar was an example of transit apartheid. They both took the streetcar to attend my presentation, which they viewed as proof that it is a good thing.
“The streetcar pays for 70 percent of its operating costs,” one of them argued. The Federal Transit Administration says it is more like 30 percent, but the good-old boy claimed that “the FTA is anti-rail and skews the data to make rail look bad.” Of course, you can reach any self-rightous conclusion you want if you are willing to fabricate data rather than rely on real numbers.
Many rail projects have a showcase element to them, similar to municipally funded stadiums–which are even worse for taxpayers & less on benefits.
How much business does tourism create?
Not nearly enough to justify all the expenses.
Stossel did a segment on 20/20 about how the bureaucracy in New Orleans is stifling.
The Antiplanner wrote:
> A couple of good-old boys attending my New Orleans
> presentation last Thursday left very upset with my conclusion
> that the streetcar was an example of transit apartheid. They
> both took the streetcar to attend my presentation, which
> they viewed as proof that it is a good thing.
Just because a few people ride a rail line does not make it a success, though are not some of the New Orleans streetcar lines very old? Pre-dating FTA (and its predecessor agency UMTA) by many decades?
> “The streetcar pays for 70 percent of its operating costs,â€
> one of them argued. The Federal Transit Administration says
> it is more like 30 percent, but the good-old boy claimed
> that “the FTA is anti-rail and skews the data to make rail
> look bad.†Of course, you can reach any self-rightous
> conclusion you want if you are willing to fabricate data
> rather than rely on real numbers.
FTA anti-rail? That is a new one. As for transit system data (as reported to the National Transit Database), as I understand it, those are the data reported to the NTD by the transit operators themselves!
CPZ wrote: “as I understand it, those are the data reported to the NTD by the transit operators themselves!”
Yes, but the Good Old Boy pointed out that the transit agencies have to use the forms designed by those anti-railers at FTA. It is apparently the forms that are biased against rail.
Well done, Randal, just the right balance.
DS
I always wondered about the development priorities of New Orleans when they invested their political capital in funding the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway (arguably the longest bridge in the world) instead of improving the levee system.
It probably was not the planners’ fault, but rather, as Scott pointed out, the Causeway probably had a lot more showcase element to it.
C. P. Zilliacus said: Just because a few people ride a rail line does not make it a success, though are not some of the New Orleans streetcar lines very old? Pre-dating FTA (and its predecessor agency UMTA) by many decades?
THWM: Operating since 1835.
CPZ: FTA anti-rail? That is a new one. As for transit system data (as reported to the National Transit Database), as I understand it, those are the data reported to the NTD by the transit operators themselves!
THWM: The FTA was more hostile to rail under president Bush.
CPZ,
Yes, the NTD data are self-reported.
Interesting that the streetcar in the picture is completely enclosed. I assume that is for air-conditioning, as that is not historically accurate.
That is one problem for public transit that requires walking outdoors. Nowadays people do not want to walk very far when it is hot, cold, or raining outside.
the highwayman [sic] asserted:
> The FTA was more hostile to rail under president Bush.
I assume that’s why the Federal Transit Administration under the George W. Bush presidency approved (among other things) the extension of the Washington Metrorail system to Dulles Airport.
Borealis said: “Nowadays people do not want to walk very far when it is hot, cold, or raining outside.”
And in the good ol’ days, people relished walking in the hot, cold, and rain. They did it uphill, both ways.
That is a good point, Frank. For example, watching this film made in SF in 1905, I wouldn’t want to be walking across dirt streets, I wouldn’t want to walk or bike where horses pooped, and I wouldn’t drive those dangerous cars. Most of all, I wouldn’t be wearing suits and white clothes in that mess and the SF weather. And I don’t like wearing a hat. The world sure has changed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=NINOxRxze9k
C. P. Zilliacus said: I assume that’s why the Federal Transit Administration under the George W. Bush presidency approved (among other things) the extension of the Washington Metrorail system to Dulles Airport.
THWM: Well Bush delayed things with it.
Also CPZ you’ve had your involment with MWCOG to monkey around with things too.
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