At the Oct. 5 Closing General Session of the APTA Annual Meeting and EXPO in New Orleans, a panel of public transportation professionals delivered the message that the city’s rebuilt and growing public transit system is helping to advance economic and physical recovery in the area.

Speakers included Justin T. Augustine III, chief executive officer of the Regional Transit Authority (RTA); Winsome Bowen, associate vice president, AECOM, Atlanta; M. Pres Kabacoff, chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer of HRI Properties, New Orleans; and Dr. John Renne, director of the Transportation Center at the University of New Orleans’ College of Urban and Public Affairs.

“Before Hurricane Katrina [in 2005], audits of the RTA were causing some concern and there was a question if the system would be able to continue to receive federal funds,” said Sherry Little, former acting administrator and deputy administrator, Federal Transit Administration (FTA), and co-founder, Spartan Solutions, Alexandria, VA, who introduced the speakers. "Ridership was declining and the bus fleet was aging. But in a few short years, thanks to a group of visionary local developers and leaders, the system has become a success story.” Little noted that FTA has made the recovery of public transit in New Orleans a priority.

New Orleans currently has three streetcar lines—St. Charles Avenue/South Carrollton Avenue, Riverfront, and Canal Street, with a spur connecting to the New Orleans Museum of Art—compared to the more than 220 miles of streetcar lines that once served the city. Augustine noted that New Orleans operates the oldest U.S. streetcar line, a source of envy for the rest of the nation. “Even [Transportation Secretary] Ray LaHood said it: ‘When other cities see what New Orleans has, they want it too,’” he said.

He described several new streetcar lines planned for New Orleans, with the aim of serving and re-energizing neighborhoods while continuing the city’s post-Katrina revitalization efforts. For example, a new line already under construction on Loyola Avenue will connect the bus and train hub at the Union Passenger Terminal with Canal Street, the business district’s main artery.

The $45 million Loyola Avenue project received federal funding through a Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery Title I grant, Augustine said. He added that the new line is expected to generate $1.1 billion in economic activity, such as the $240 million renovation and reorientation of the Hyatt Hotel, closed since Hurricane Katrina.

Augustine said a $75 million RTA tax revenue bond will fund a second proposed streetcar line, the French Quarter loop, which will connect with the Loyola Avenue line at Canal Street. No funding sources have been identified yet for a third proposed project, an extension of the existing Riverfront Streetcar Line that would serve the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

Kabacoff expanded on Augustine’s theme of connectivity by demonstrating precisely which city assets will be linked by the streetcar projects. “This city grew around streetcar lines,” he explained. “When most of them were removed in the 1960s, neighborhoods started to decline.”

The French Quarter loop will tie together key city assets including the Municipal Auditorium, Congo Square, Armstrong Park, and the Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts, Kabacoff said, and will provide service to even more destinations if the line extends downriver along St. Claude Avenue. Neighborhoods including Faubourg Marigny, Faubourg St. Roch, Tremé, and the French Quarter would be linked together by the streetcar line, as they were before streetcars were replaced with buses.

“The ultimate goal is urban connectivity,” Kabacoff said.

Another economic boon for the city, according to Bowen, could be the construction of a streetcar construction and maintenance facility that would serve the nation. “Currently, New Orleans is the only city in the nation with the capability of building and maintaining streetcars,” she said.

The session concluded with a presentation by Renne, author of a recent book on transit-oriented development. Echoing the philosophies of his colleagues at the podium, he argued that the presence of public transit drives sustainable urban development rather than vice versa.

“Transit is the key to reshaping our cities into livable, walkable communities, the kind we seek when we go on vacation,” Renne said. “The goal is to be able to abandon the automobile.”

Citing a study by the Downtown Development District of New Orleans, Renne said that 82 percent of New Orleans residents under the age of 30 want walkable, transit-friendly neighborhoods and 50 percent of the general population say they do.  He argued that ever-expanding suburbia is an approach of the past and that the trend now is to live closer to work and to transit hubs.

“If we build the transit, it will draw residents,” he concluded. “We have a shifting of priorities away from suburbia toward transit corridors and the inner city. The trend is not to build new communities farther and farther away from the city center, but toward infill.”

Photo by Ken Bordelon Panelists at the Closing General Session, from left: Justin T. Augustine III, Winsome Bowen, M. Pres Kabacoff, and Dr. John Renne.