It's doing what it was supposed to do

People who depend on public transit to get downtown to work in the fine restaurants and hotels there complain that RTA does a better job at getting tourists from those hotels to the those restaurants than at getting them to and from work.  RTA says the workers, "don't understand the system.

“The RTA commonly denies our claim that New Orleans public transportation is created in favor of tourists instead of the workers, but these statistics are clear. … The Rampart line cost $75 million, but it actually decreased access to jobs,” said Ashley Pintos, a member of the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Committee.

Visibly exasperated, RTA General Manager Justin Augustine shot back that the Rampart line still brings riders to Canal Street, where they can transfer to numerous other lines.

He disputed RIDE’s claim that convenient access to more than 1,000 jobs was reduced when the Rampart streetcar came online, while acknowledging that the project, originally intended to take riders all the way from Canal Street to the Lower 9th Ward without forcing them to transfer to a bus, instead ended up stopping at Elysian Fields Avenue, due to limited funding.

“In terms of negative impact along the Rampart Street corridor, there is no negative impact,” he said.

“As I read the report, there are some things — and I’m not here to bash anybody’s report — but I think there’s a disconnect in terms of understanding how the system works,” Augustine said. “You hear people get up in public and then make statements as if they are fact.”

Augustine isn't quite right, though. The problem isn't that people don't understand the system, the problem is the system is working as intended.  We've explained this many times by now.