Guess they dodged this bullet

NOLA.com: Auditor warned New Orleans RTA that paratransit issues could lead to federal oversight

An estimated 1,200 residents in New Orleans rely on the RTA’s federally-mandated paratransit service to get to and from work, doctor’s appointments and recreational activities.

The RTA, however, “engaged in patterns and practices” in 2022 and 2023 that limited the availability of that service, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to the report from the RTA’s Office of Internal Audit and Compliance.

A “significant number” of trips from Jan. 2022 to June 2023 were excessively long or had “untimely pickups,” RTA Manager of Audit Compliance Malon Thompson wrote.

The RTA also used incomplete data to “inflate” the paratransit service's performance metrics during that time period, Thompson wrote.

Under a heading labeled "exposure," Malon wrote: "Failure to adhere to ADA regulations and [Federal Transit Administration] guidelines can cause the organization to be subject to lawsuits, consent decrees, fines, and/or increased federal oversight."

Joke's on the auditors, though.  Pretty sure "federal oversight" isn't going to exist anymore by the time this would come across anyone's desk.

 

Bus nap

RTA says it has a strategy to improve service and get the busses running on time more often. Apparently this involves reducing the number of busses in the "active fleet" and by adjusting the schedules so that they don't look like they're overpromising. That sure sounds like a service cut to me. The dreaded phrase "more with less" is ringing around in there somewhere.  But RTA insists it will make things better in the long run if they aren't spending as much time dealing with maintenance issues and after the new busses they bought with COVID money get up and running. We'll see. 

Anyway I thought this was funny. 

On Wednesday, Willy Lee, a dishwasher at Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse in the French Quarter, sat on a bench at a stop on the currently out-of-service Rampart streetcar line watching videos on his phone, waiting for his shift to start. He left home two and a half hours before his 4 p.m. shift began. 

“I leave home around 1:30 because the bus be kinda late,” he said. 

Lee lives in the Little Woods neighborhood in New Orleans East and must transfer buses in order to get downtown, adding more possibility for delays. He said sometimes buses don’t arrive at their expected time shown on Le Pass, the RTA’s app.

In a September interview, Hankins blamed the problems, in part, on a lack of qualified mechanics to quickly fix problems, perform routine maintenance and get buses back on the road. 

The plan announced Thursday will address that by reducing the number of buses that the agency’s mechanics have to work on. Of the 18 buses being pulled out of the active fleet, 10 are being “to sleep.” The RTA will hold onto them, but they will be removed from the roads and the maintenance pool. (The agency currently has 14 buses in that category, bringing the total to 24 beginning in January.) The other eight will be permanently retired.

Anyway, wake me up when a trip downtown from Little Woods doesn't take the same amount of time as a flight to Philadelphia. 

Shark alert

It's been a busy couple of days with little time to do much yellow blogging but we would be seriously derelict in our responsibilities if we did not note the Metal Shark ferries (well, one of them anyway) are finally going into service. The early reviews are positive.

After two years of delays, a sleek new passenger ferry began plying the Mississippi River between Algiers Point and Canal Street on Saturday, in journeys that are faster, calmer and better for the environment.

“It was real smooth, very relaxing. It doesn’t rock up and down,” Christina Burrle, 24, said as she exited the ferry near the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas.

Real smooth and relaxing sounds pretty good. I kind of remember one of the problems with getting these boats certified had to do with the safety equipment. So we don't want things getting too rough out there.  On the other hand, since the boats are no longer free to pedestrians, some of us might want our $2 each way to buy us a thrill or two. Maybe that's possible. The deckhands seem to think so, anyway. 

Guiding the ferry straight across the river might seem like a simple task, Burris said. “But it takes a lot of technique, practice and great ship-handling capabilities when you get high river stages and the currents starts moving at five, six, seven, eight knots. You can catch yourself in an eddy, kind of like a blender, and you can flip yourself all the way around.”

Can't wait to try it out.

Don't get too used to it

For those of us who have been wondering for a while now what it would take to convince RTA to try going fare-free. We now know the answer is a global pandemic.

Public transit systems in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish are waiving fares for riders beginning Sunday due to continued coronavirus concerns in Louisiana, officials said.

The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority announced Friday it will no longer charge for bus, streetcar and ferry services. But, it is also reducing the number of routes it will service.

It would be great if someone suggested we try and keep this going permanently but we know that isn't going to happen. What is going to happen when/if things ever return to "normal" is we are going to start hearing from wealthy people in charge of things that many of our nice ideas about public goods and services "just aren't possible anymore" because of the broken economy.  We began 2020 pushing for free college and healthcare but we will end it being told we can't even afford buses anymore.

Hey thank goodness we saved the airlines, though.

The Six Million Dollar Men

We now know who picked up the six million dollar contract to operate the ferries.  Linguists will ruminate for decades over the commonalities in corporatespeak nomenclature that produce trash Mcfuture names like "Transdev" (the company RTA just fired from this gig) and "Labmar" the entity who they have just hired.  Labmar is apparently a portmanteau of Laborde Marine. But it also includes these people.

Labmar, which is a joint venture made up of Laborde Marine, Circular Consulting, Royal Engineers & Consultants and MSF Global, beat out HMS Ferries, a firm based in Washington state, for the contract.

The firms' proposals and the scoring sheets from the agency's evaluations of them were not made available Monday.

There are so many Labordes to keep track of in this town. J. Peter Laborde Jr. is one scion of the Ocean Drilling-Tidewater Laborde offshore oil and support services fortune and is pretty much carrying on that Uptown family's traditional business. Royal Engineers are familiar city contractors on several projects including the Canal Street Ferry terminal so now they will be managing the boats that land there. MSF Global is the tech services company who built RTA's app.   

Anyway it looks like one result of the RTA/Metal Shark ferry debacle is a couple of RTA contractors and a classic New Orleans plutocrat get to pick up a bit of a windfall. They say in the article that it also means ferry services could be restored as early as this week.  So everybody wins, really.

I'm guessing Duck Tours?

RTA is supposed to vote this coming Monday on a charter boat operator who will provide temporary ferry service until either the broken down old boats get back up and running or Metal Shark's tin can catamarans ever pass a Coast Guard inspection.

Some of the council members like Kristin Palmer, who district includes the French Quarter and Algiers, displayed signs indicating it's been 67 days with no ferry. "The management system was flawed, deeply flawed," Palmer said. "The operations and maintenance of the ferry system has been deeply flawed. So, we're hear to get some answers."

RTA Board Chairman Flozell Daniels' agreed. "The process was managed poorly," Daniels said. "There was not as much accountability as there should have been The contractor did not do what we thing was the right job to make sure it was managed appropriately."

Daniels promised the RTA is now trying to do better for the public. Two new ferry boats, delivered about 18 months ago have yet to pass Coast Guard inspection. The $10 million vessels were supposed to replace two older boats, neither of which is currently in working condition. People who rely on the ferries to get to work are hurting.

"We've ignored the fact that this is a commuter problem," commuter Fabienne Keenum said. "This is public transportation and I and other service industry and lower income workers rely that ferry to get across."

It's good to see something being done about the "commuter problem," at least. Last week, the city seemed more focused on compensating Algiers Point business owners for our sudden inability to deliver tourists for them to cater to.  There's no doubt those businesses have suffered, of course. But for some reason the city always seems to consider workers as an afterthought. (Did you know, this week, an American city implemented fare-free transit for its riders? Can you even imagine New Orleans RTA currently helmed by a "fare enforcement" specialist considering such a thing?)

Anyway, why won't they name the charter boat operator? Obviously they have somebody in mind.  Please don't tell us we can "Ride The Ducks" across the river anytime soon. You laugh, but thinking about public transit exclusively in terms of amusement rides for tourists is exactly how Mitch Landrieu got us into the Metal Shark problem in the first place.  Here's a public post by Clark Thompson that's been making the rounds on Facebook. I assume it's okay to share here, in a different public part of the internet. He introduces it as a letter to the mayor he wrote in 2016.  Basically, the style of boat that Mitch ordered was never fit to operate on the Mississippi River.

I am not a bidder on the RTA ferry project, therefore I am late to the game, but I recently learned some details of the RFP (for some reason the document is not publicly available).

As a long time ferry user, a USCG licensed captain, a Naval Architect, a builder of aluminum boats, and a principal investigator on marine building materials for Army Research Labratory, I have grave concerns regarding this RFP.

This RFP requests a high speed, catamaran hull, fabricated from aluminum. Such a vessel is well suited to the long runs on the Hudson River, and in Sydney Harbor. Such a request flies in the face of hundreds of years of experience of operations on the Mississippi River.

First, this is a short run, and a high speed boat will have no time to get up to speed before it must slow back down. The medium speed diesel engines will not have time to blow themselves clean, and will end up running dirty. This will in turn lead to considerably higher than projected maintainence costs and downtime. Furthermore, in order to obtain the required speed, larger engines must be selected, further driving up total cost of ownership.

Second, catamarans have poor low speed manuverability. The complicated eddies on the east bank ferry landing require a highly manuverable boat. Bow thrusters are a poor substitute for a proper initial design and are another item of maintainence that will further drive up total cost of ownership and downtime.

Third, aluminum is a poor material for impact. While this lightweight material is acceptable for the garbage strewn waterways of the Hudson or Sydney Harbor, it is ill suited to the frequent impacts with whole trees, oil drums and other large debris carried by the Mississippi river. Look along the waterfront and you will find centuries of experience dictate steel as the prefered material for watercraft along the Mississippi. Only small response boats are build in aluminum here. This flawed material specification will result in a high risk of downtime for the ferry, and much higher than projected total cost of ownership.

I address this message to you as a lover of the city and the river. Our city will suffer with the impact of a bad decision on this contract for 30 years or more and it is critically important to get it right.

Please consider delaying this contract award until the RFP has been corrected to properly request a boat suitable for the Mississippi River operating environment.

We've also noted previously and repeatedly, the various concerns with the contractor itself.  I think this post has most of that in one place.  But the overriding factor seems to be that Mitch thought the catamarans were cool. So that's what he bought.  Let's hope the charter contractor is chosen according to more reasonable criteria.

Do do do do do do

Well now there's a lawsuit.  Surprised it took this long.

The suit, filed in Orleans Parish Civil District Court by Algiers resident Skip Gallagher, claims the Regional Transit Authority shirked its duty when it ignored Gallagher's requests for more information on what's been keeping the boats from service on the Mississippi River.

I like that the person suing over the seaworthiness of the boats is named Skip. Anyway, assuming most people reading this already know enough of the Metal Shark background saga now. So let's skip to the end of this story where we see Skip is actually asking about the part that's been missing from that so far.

Gallagher wanted to know more about the whole ordeal, including what RTA and Transdev executives were saying to each other about the boats via email.

He also wanted to know who was responsible for selecting Metal Shark and whether that team had any expertise in boat construction management.

We've learned a lot about why what Metal Shark built can't pass inspection. But what we haven't heard enough about yet is why was that faulty product ordered in the first place? We did note back in May a pair of stories about RTA board member Al Herrara, who was forced to resign over a conflict of interest wherein a company he owned sold parts to Metal Shark.  Herrara went on to allege “questionable bidding and billing practices" at RTA in response.  I don't know if anything else has been learned since then.  Maybe Skip's lawsuit will find some emails about it or something.

Meanwhile, the city says they are looking at ways they might be able to compensate Algiers business owners affected by the ferry outage. No one has any idea what can be done for transit riders who may have once relied on these ferries.

Do do do do do do..

Another inspection, another chance for the the boats to be found "lacking on multiple fronts" 

Two trouble-plagued ferries that were supposed to go into service a year ago for the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority still don't meet federal standards, and it’s unclear when they will start carrying passengers across the Mississippi River.

U.S. Coast Guard officials said Friday they inspected the boats in July and found them lacking on multiple fronts. To remedy the problems, the RTA said it will hire a project manager.

The new RTA head wants you to know it's not as bad as it sounds.  To be clear, they didn't fail the inspection. They withdrew from it before that could happen. 

In an interview, new RTA CEO Alex Wiggins disputed the idea that the boats had failed inspection, saying the process was paused at his request after the Coast Guard found issues on the boats on the first day of inspections. But Coast Guard spokeswoman Lt. Rachel Ault said it's standard practice for the Coast Guard to stop an inspection midway when it's clear that a vessel isn't ready for service. The Coast Guard did just that on July 25, she said.

This is, of course, after the boats weren't ready in June, which is after they weren't ready for Jazzfest.  And, of course, all of that was well after they weren't ready for the Tricentennial celebrations.

Three years later, the agency entered into a contract with Metal Shark for two new high-speed, catamaran-style vessels to handle the Canal Street-to-Algiers Point run. Transdev, the RTA's private contractor, managed that process.

The boats were supposed to arrive by May 2018. That deadline was later advanced to March to align with some tricentennial celebrations and former Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s tenure at City Hall. But neither deadline was met, after inspections revealed numerous problems.

So, much like the airport, the ferries are something else that aren't ready at least in part because Mitch wanted them rushed in time for his big party. Not that we can say for certain this is why Metal Shark was hired. But we are pretty sure that was a less than great idea.   

Transdev isn't in charge anymore so here are some Transdev people to be in charge of things

Reshuffling at RTA under the new "hybrid" management system.

But under a new contract that will be inked by Sept. 1, Transdev will handle maintenance and operations of the agency’s buses, ferries and streetcars, but not the agency’s administrative and leadership functions. That will fall to Wiggins and former interim Executive Director Jared Munster, now the agency’s chief administrative officer.

Also part of the cabinet is Mark Major, a veteran transit official who will serve as the RTA’s chief financial officer, the role most recently held by Ronald Baptiste of Transdev. Major was a finalist for Wiggins’ job and a former chief investment officer for Transdev. Baptiste, another transit veteran, will move into a separate role on Transdev’s smaller New Orleans team, which will be led by Darryll Simpson.

Wiggins also aims to hire a chief operating officer in the coming weeks.

Good to see Major landed on his feet.  As for the rest of the new management scheme, I've never seen the point of a slightly less privatized structure if the operation is still by and large privatized.

Wiggins says he hopes to expand service but isn't ready to talk about how just yet. There's
"low hanging fruit," he says but looks like he's still asking where.

“Being new to the organization, I know that there is some low-hanging fruit, and we will talk about things we will address in very short order,” Wiggins said to the RTA’s board.

“How do we provide better services to the New Orleans East? To Algiers? How do we really put the ‘R’ back in regionalization when it comes to the RTA?”

This month, RTA has been paying a consultant to run a series of meetings designed to provide the appearance of public input.  I'd ask what they hope to learn if I thought they really wanted to learn anything.  We need more routes, greater frequency, and later hours with fares as close to zero as possible. How hard is that to figure out?

Anyway, a couple of the meetings got postponed by Barry but there are a few still planned for this week.  Here is the schedule in case you feel like shouting into the void.

The right to move around

Here's a report from the uptown RTA charrette. This might be triggering for those of us who went through the post-Katrina public input planning process.

The series of planning events are open-house style; people can drop in to participate throughout the event. The activities and information session are meant to take about 20-30 minutes to complete.

At the meeting, attendees were each given a packet of materials with a set of stickers for them to use in interactive displays about changing the transit system. Using the stickers, participants can vote on what they want to see most in the redesign, such as more frequent streetcar and bus stops versus more express lines, where they travel to most within the city, and which options are most important to them: more reliable service, more frequent service, faster service, more weekend service, more late-night service or better regional connections.

According to Jennifer Brady, who conducts outreach for the RTA, the RTA is surveying people at bus stops, including Elk Place and Canal Street, the largest transfer point in the city, so that people who cannot attend the meetings are able to provide feedback for the redesign.

The survey asks about how frequently people ride the bus and streetcar, what other transit options they use, as well as what they would most like to see change within the current transit system.

Well at least it only takes 20 or 30 minutes to go play the game with the stickers. I have no idea if it's worth participating.  The purpose of these events is to have some sort of "outreach" on the record in order to insulate decision makers from criticism when the actual policies are made.  That doesn't necessarily mean they'll do a bad job. But it does mean they are definitely going to be condescending about it one way or the other.

Anyway the goal is to create a transit system people can use to navigate the city with as much convenience as a car owner might.  That means allowing for actual freedom of movement at all hours and in all directions. But for the most part, the pros and consultants are focused on getting grunts to work and back "efficiently." That isn't good enough. And they're going to use your pile of stickers to justify whatever they want to do either way.

But if you want to play the game, here is the schedule. There is one tonight in Mid-City.

Do do do do do do

And the latest bit in the Metal Shark saga is......

No, the boats aren't ready yet.

Two new ferries built for the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority have again failed inspections, yet another setback for a project that has been delayed for over a year.

The inspections, outlined in a June 3 report by an RTA consultant, have kept the boats out of service well after one RTA official's prediction a few months ago that the boats would be in operation by the time of the 2019 Jazz Fest at the end of April.

Oh well. Maybe they'll be ready in time for Gretna Fest instead.  Better make sure the gator-proofing is up to standard, though.

GRETNA, La. — The City of Gretna has a warning about large gators. The warning comes after several gators were spotted along the riverfront.

Mayor Belinda Constant ordered the posting of signs that say "Caution! Alligators have been sighted in the river in this area."

Constant is nervous that a child or pet could be snatched up.

"We received another picture of the alligator actually sunning himself on the concrete part of the levee," Constant said. "The most important thing for us is just having people aware that there is an alligator close by."

 Anyway it's good to see there's another looking at the boats now.  That should.. help?

Shipbuilder Metal Shark did fix some issues with the boats within 45 days of receiving roughly $959,000 from the RTA, as was agreed to in a March deal between the two parties, RTA attorney Sundiata Haley said.

But Greenwood Marine Management of Morgan City found the company still had not addressed other problems, including issues with the boats’ rescue equipment and fuel tanks.

I don't know who Greenwood Marine Management is. But it looks like they are different from The Shearer Group who RTA had hired to review the Metal Shark work just back in December.  No idea if this is getting the boats on the water any faster but, hey, it's a living.

Maybe someone can explain all of this better at one of these public input meetings.

Public meetings to redesign the public transportation network across Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard Parishes kick off Monday evening in New Orleans. Where people live and work in the New Orleans area changes over time, so the public transit authorities need to periodically update their transit systems in order to efficiently move people around the region.

Under a yearlong program called New Links, transportation planners are studying existing transit lines and holding public meetings to get input from riders. Information gleaned from that process will be used to propose an entirely redesigned transportation network for Jefferson, Orleans, and St. Bernard Parishes, according to information on the New Links website.

Or maybe they can't. Either way, it means more consultants get paid which I am beginning to think might be the actual point. Still, if you think it's worth your time, most of these meetings are in July. Here is the schedule.

Do do do do do do

Hey what do you know, the Metal Shark boats still aren't ready.

NEW ORLEANS — Two brand new ferry boats arrived in New Orleans about a year ago to replace the 60-year-old, oft-broken down ferry boats that traverse the waters between Algiers and New Orleans CBD.

 They have yet to transport ferry patrons and no one seems to know when that will change.

 “RTA and Metal Shark owe an explanation and a clear timeline of when we can expect the vessels, which have been delayed for more than a year, to go into service,” said Council member Kristin Gisleson Palmer.

This is a bit of an oddball TV story in that it treats the matter as though it were a sudden discovery.  There's actually been a lot of local reporting on the ferry saga. I compiled much of it here a few weeks ago.

Anyway it's been pointed out to me that the problem could be as much RTA's lack of experience determining and enforcing the terms of its contract as it is the shipbuilder's ability to fill it. Which is to say it could be a Transdev issue. Is Transdev going to be in charge of that part of the business under the restructuring?

Just take the moneeys back

A lot of what the mayor wants to do in order to claw back from the tourism cabal has to go through Baton Rouge first. That's going to be difficult. The Governor has already signaled some opposition to her plans and most lawmakers from other parts of the state are more likely to respond to requests from tourism lobbyists and less likely to care about funding drainage in New Orleans. Also everybody up there is just used to the money piling up in the direction it currently does and, well, there's a lot of inertia to overcome.

But that doesn't mean there aren't some options available outside of all that if you know where the pressure points are. Flozell Daniels has an idea about that.

The RTA sent a letter to New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp. CEO Mark Romig this month demanding the return of more than $31 million to the transit agency. The RTA's current chairman, Flozell Daniels, said the agency now believes the 2001 agreement that diverted the funding was unconstitutional.

Daniels added that the agency isn't planning to give up any more money under that agreement.

"For two decades our service has been impacted by limitations on financial resources, while the resources available to the tourism and hospitality marketing agencies have steadily increased," Daniels wrote. "New Orleans cannot be a 21st century city without 21st century transit."

The legal stuff here is tricky. By the terms of a 2001 settlement, RTA gets to collect sales tax on hotel rooms but it has to kick back some of that to NOTMC.  What Daniels is saying, now, though, is that NOTMC doesn't use the money for the purposes specified in the ballot referendum authorizing the sales tax.  So, I guess, as a steward of these public funds, he is stopping the payments. 

This is a fun argument to present because it forces Romig to justify his organization's use of the funds in terms of whether or not they "specifically benefit public transit," as Daniels puts it.  I don't think he succeeds at this.

But Romig said the Marketing Corp. often promotes the RTA's streetcars in the ads it aims at tourists, and that it has used the roughly $2.9 million a year it gets from the tax to support local festivals and other events for which public transit is used.

Ha ha, yeah, making ads that tell more tourists to get on the streetcar isn't doing much to benefit public transit.  It does crowd the streetcar lines a bit and reinforce the notion that public transit is an amusement ride. It might also get some tourists to dinner at Commander's, although not necessarily on time. I suppose this provides some benefit to that wing of the Brennan family. 

As for the festivals, that's really more a case of creating a challenge for RTA, isn't it?   Romig's phrasing suggests they should be happy to have been brought more "customers." But public transit doesn't exist just to collect more fares. It is the transit agency's job to move people to and from these events without disrupting too badly the commutes of their regular riders in the process. If anything it's RTA who needs extra support from tourism agencies to meet the demand these events create.

And if they can't do that then maybe RTA is better off just taking its money back. 

Chasing numbers

RTA has a plan for the Canal Streetcar. It's a very data-driven plan.   The objective is to get one specific number down a little bit. 

The proposal, which has not yet been finalized, could be rolled out as a pilot project from May through December of this year.

Officials say it would trim almost 14 minutes from the trip from the river to Carrollton and about 10 minutes and 30 seconds going the other way, according to a report presented to RTA board members Thursday. That would mean trips in either direction would take about 22 minutes.

That's all well and good if all you do is track how long it takes to move one streetcar from point A to point B.  That's an easily measurable outcome.  Everybody loves those.  Unfortunately it doesn't account for people's actual experience traveling through or along the affected route. That's trickier.

For streetcar passengers, it might depend on where they're starting from.  For some, they may have to walk significantly further.

The plan calls for eliminating 30 of the 49 stops along the route, mostly in the area between Carrollton and Claiborne avenues. The longest distance between stops would be the seven-block stretch between Carrollton and Jefferson Davis Parkway.

If, in theory, we're saving 10 minutes heading in bound on the streetcar, how much are we giving back if we have to walk an extra 4 or 5 blocks to board?  That sounds like it's almost a wash already. By focusing only on the streetcar travel time, we're deliberately ignoring the effect on the transit system from a holistic perspective. That includes the effect on vehicular traffic, by the way.

The eliminated stops would largely coincide with the closing of intersections and crossings that allow U-turns across the neutral ground. According to the plan, 17 intersections that don’t have traffic signals would be closed, as would five turnarounds.

In other words, they're planning a severe interruption of the street grid at Canal Street which is already something of a bottleneck as it is.  The new scheme will further congest neighborhood traffic flow and funnel even more cars onto Broad and Jeff Davis.  Eliminating the turnarounds is also likely to jam up Canal Street as well.

So lots of people are going to have a harder time getting through this area of town.  BUT the streetcar moves between stops at a marginally faster rate.  Does that make for a more efficient and user friendly transit system?  Who cares, so long as we achieve our designated measurable outcome, the project justifies itself.

What is the purpose of the riverfront streetcar?

It's just a ride.  I can't think of anyone actually needing to take that to get across the Quarter. Not when you have to walk all the way out of your way just to get over to where the tracks are in the first place. Might as well just walk to your destination.  Does anybody actually use it?  I mean does anybody who is not a tourist use it to actually get somewhere they need to go?  

Anyway I think this means they're making a better use of it.

Streetcars running down Canal Street will soon take a turn and run 24-hours a day on the Riverfront line flanking the French Quarter, in a move that New Orleans transit officials say should help ease commutes for late-night service workers.

In a news release Tuesday (Sept. 25), the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority announced it's extending the two streetcar lines that normally end at the foot of Canal Street, to instead take a turn on the Riverfront tracks and end at the French Market. The transit agency also said the Canal streetcars will run 24-hours a day along the Riverfront line from Canal Street to the French Market, replacing the Riverfront streetcars that usually stop service at midnight

So if you're trying to get to Mid City from Decatur Street late at night, you can go get the streetcar now.  Of course anyone who has had to rely on the late night St. Charles streetcars before will know they run so infrequently that you might be better off walking anyway.   This probably won't be much different.

Still it's good to see service extended.  These 24 hour buses should help.

The service changes take effect this Sunday, the RTA's news release says. They will add to existing late-night "owl" bus routes that run to New Orleans East (63-line) and Algiers (100-line).

Additionally, the RTA said the 16-Claiborne bus line will run 24-hours a day starting at the end of this month, matching the 24-hour service the 39-Tulane bus line now running to Causeway Boulevard past Ochsner Medical Center on Jefferson Highway.

More buses would help even more, though. 

Mitch and his deadlines

The general project timeline of the Landrieu years was always about beating the clock to something. (Last year we called it Beat The Clock Doctrine.) First it was a bunch of stuff needed to be rushed through in time for the Superbowl. Then it was a bunch of stuff needed to be rushed through in time for #Katrina10. After that there were things Mitch wanted done in time to take photos in front of during the extra few months added to his term for the Tricentennial parties.    It was a great way to jam through a bunch of stuff you might not want scrutinized too closely. 

For the most part, Mitch made it work for him.  He didn't always make his deadlines, though. The airport still isn't ready.  (The road to the airport really isn't ready.)  The WTC remodel got bogged down in a bunch of legal wrangling and shenanigans (some of that of Mitch's own making.) Also the ferry terminal is late and way overbudget.

Oh and now we think maybe it's not such a great idea in the first place.

About $3.8 million has already been spent on design and engineering for the terminal, an amount Palmer said she thinks is too high. She has called on the RTA to stop any further spending on the design process, and said she's concerned about oversight of the project.

"I'm opposed to any more money put to this project," Palmer said.

"I don't have a lot of faith that this project can be done well at this point," she added.

And, you know, Kristin is probably right.  At least the existing facility actually has the covered walkway that people have been asking for. Maybe just figure out how to clean that up and use it.  Sometimes it pays to miss a deadline or two. 

Palmer said in an interview that she is suspicious that the project was rushed to demolish the terminal in time for the city's tricentennial this year. Its original construction schedule had demolition scheduled for July 2017.

The ferry terminal remains standing.

Still can't get there from here

Well this didn't take long.  Pretty much as soon as RTA announces it has a plan to extend one bus line a little bit of the way into Jefferson Parish, the JET people are mad.

The head of Jefferson Parish’s public transit system says she was kept in the dark about plans to run another New Orleans bus line into the suburban parish next year — a move that she says will hurt her system’s profits.

Sharon Leader, the director of Jefferson Transit, said this week that while she knew the idea was being considered, she had no idea the Regional Transit Authority intended to go forward with the new route in 2019.

RTA officials recently announced they plan to extend the South Claiborne Avenue line to Ochsner Medical Center on Jefferson Highway, a move aimed at giving hundreds of riders a more convenient way to get to work or their doctor.

“I knew nothing about this,” Leader said. “And I’m about as regional as they come, but you don’t push things on people without telling them.”

"Profits" is a funny word in there.  I wonder if that's Leader's choice or if it came from the Advocate. Profit isn't really the concern of a public transit service.  Maybe she just means revenue.  Even so, it's another indicator that these problems aren't going to be solved until the whole "Regional" aspect of these systems is better integrated.  

Whither Ron Forman's big expensive video board?

Oh look we're "pressing pause" on something again.

New Orleans officials are pressing pause on plans to demolish and rebuild the Canal Street ferry terminal, having dramatically underestimated construction costs.

Though the Regional Transit Authority budgeted $14 million for the first phase of the terminal project, the lowest bid for the work came in at $26.6 million, forcing the agency back to the drawing board.

Officials said they will come up with a new, more affordable design over the next few months. And the terminal, initially on track to be razed in September, will instead be bulldozed by this time next year.

It's the phrase of the year. Off the top of my head I can recall LaToya wanted to "press pause" on her appointment of Warren Riley to Homeland Security. Kristin Palmer said she wanted to "press pause" on short term rental licenses. Sewerage and Water Board recently recently hit the "pause button" on a bond sale. Can we please press pause on pressing pause for a while? I think we have hit the quota.

Anyway, this pause is kind of a surprise. At least to me it is.  The whole course of this ferry re-fit has looked like spending more money on providing worse service. Why (sorry) press pause on that now? The explanation in the article has it that difficulties arising from the location of the construction site and the timing of the project caused the price to go up.  Also they go out of their way to say it is definitely not Audubon's fault.

The higher cost estimate does not factor in the addition of the $7.3 million bridge, a project that is being managed separately by the Audubon Institute.

That implies Audubon was paying for the bridge. I don't think that's true but I could be wrong. This says the city was planning to pay for it out of "(Hurricane) Katrina insurance proceeds that were unobligated." And this says that Audubon had asked to spend $2 million of that on a "video board" which Forman later said they wanted in order to "'dress up' the bridge with 'artwork, lighting or whatever it is.'" We have no idea whether or not that's ever going to be part of the plan now. We do like what Kristin Palmer has to say about that, though. 

Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, one of the most vocal proponents of adding the pedestrian bridge, said the agency should consider simply renovating the old terminal rather than rebuilding it. She said the focus should be on helping commuters rather than building something that might impress tourists.

“I’m not so concerned about the tourists having a pretty vista,” Palmer said. “I am more concerned, quite frankly, about getting people to work.”

Meanwhile, Forman has plenty of other ways to suck money out of the city via the riverfront as Audubon has a cooperative endeavor agreement to operate whatever they do with the Esplanade wharf area. Walter Isaacson says there's gonna be some sort of music venue there. He also says he made that up. 

Isaacson tells Gambit he doesn’t know what the plans are and was pointing to the park project as an example of the city’s vision of tourism expansion, with the wharf turning into something “like Crescent Park or the Moonwalk or other public parks, where there’s venues for art and music and tourism.” As for its specific use as a music venue, “I obviously don’t know for sure, because there have been no hearings or proposals on it,” he said.

We were supposed to hear more about that at a City Council committee hearing today. No word on how that went yet.  More to come after the pause, I guess.

Update: Here is where the money is supposed to come from to develop the new park. 

The deal between Audubon and the city calls for the nonprofit to develop the site as a park and raise $15 million for its development.

So far, Audubon has put together $13 million: $9 million from the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center; $2 million from New Orleans & Co., the city's rebranded convention and visitors bureau; and $2 million from Audubon itself.

The port is expected to help raise the remaining $2 million from private sources.

They don't know what it's going to look like yet but they say there will be "significant public input" before that happens so be on the lookout for some 10 AM meetings on a random Wednesday or whatever in the future.

Upperdate: Another point from that article is that the neighborhood associations are already worried about the "disruptive" effects of an event venue like what Isaacson described in that Time piece.  As a footnote to that issue we can look back at last year's election  season when both candidates for mayor talked up the possibility of such an amenity specifically for its revenue generating potential so we'll see how that goes.

Uppestdate: This morning, the Advocate has edited the lede to their article about the ferries from "New Orleans officials are pressing pause.." to "New Orleans officials are going back to the drawing board.." probably in order to gaslight the readership.

Slightly less reliable than walking

Did you see RTA released a new app this month? It is very helpful for letting riders who have smartphones guess how long they might have to wait on the next bus.  It doesn't actually make the buses come any sooner, of course, but hey information is power, right?

To take an RTA bus from Hollygrove to her old restaurant job in the Warehouse District, Amanda Soprano used to leave home an hour and a half before the start of her shift.

Between a Tulane Avenue bus she says is chronically late in the afternoons and a streetcar transfer, Soprano often encountered delays that would make her late for work; a fact that grated on her, knowing she could have driven to Biloxi, Mississippi in the same amount of time it took to go downtown on public transit.

Leaving work, she’d face a long bus ride home or an expensive Uber trip. She’s known dishwashers and cooks who spent the night on Canal Street after working late and missing their buses home

It's an hour and a half to get downtown from Hollygrove if everything is working normally.  RTA doesn't tell you this part but there is another app in your phone that estimates how long it takes a person to walk that distance. Let's pick a random spot in Hollygrove and see what that says.

Wow that really is valuable information.  I know you're thinking what about a bike but you don't want to risk getting a thousand dollar ticket. Invest in a decent pair of shoes and you're all set.

Stop and frisk on wheels

This weekend we walked for a few blocks with the Uptown Swingers parade and second line. It was very hot out. Luckily there were some guys in the crowd pulling coolers of water and other beverages for sale. Nobody asked if they had permits to do that. Nobody called the police. Maybe it would have been different if they were on bikes.

.@mayorcantrell Look at this: your city's police giving a Black man a nearly $1000 bicycle ticket for nothing. Gentilly & Elysian Fields at 4am... how is this anything but harassment? pic.twitter.com/YkBzLSnswn

— Jules Bentley 🏴 (@julesbentley) June 24, 2018

That is very nearly a $1,000 ticket just because a cop decided to check and see if the dude had a $3 to $35 tag on his bike. Is that real? Jules is reliable source and all but, geeze, is that real?

It's real.

So, there Louis was in the empty pre-dawn, riding that raggedy bike in a striped bike lane, only now he was pedaling against the ghosts of would-be traffic. That is technically a violation, though one every cyclist in the city can attest to breaking. Louis himself has done it plenty of times before because he feels safer knowing cars aren't coming at his back.

That's when two New Orleans Police Department cars rolled up on him, lights flashing.

"I immediately went to the 'don't shoot' position," Louis said.

An officer ran the driver's license Louis handed over while Louis called his father, and he sat on the curb, thinking it all over.

He did not, Louis reasoned, look like somebody out to commit a crime.

So the local bicycle wars have been a subject of some interest here on the ol' Yellow Blog over the years so I feel obliged to say a few words about the political background to these rather expensive citations.

As bicycling has become more popular over the past decade or so, authorities in city government and law enforcement have sought to exert more control over it for various purposes most of which are bad. The city is interested in new ways to shake down residents for fees and fines . Politicians and real estate people like to cultivate at least the appearance.. often only the appearance.. of "bike friendly infrastructure." And, of course, law enforcement is always looking for new pretexts to do stop and frisk.

Here is a Gambit article from 2010 about a proposal to "reinstate a bicycle registration program that hasn't been enforced since before Hurricane Katrina." The fees it proposed were ridiculous, as you can see in the section below, but the reason the measure ended up getting tabled was because it was clear NOPD couldn't be trusted with it.

Jatres says the MBC's biggest concern is the fee hike — a 500 percent increase for non-commercial registration. As for the "commercial" fee, the ordinance does not make clear who would need the $75 license.

"A lot of people bicycle for economic reasons, that's their form of transportation. Having low income people (pay) a $15 fee can be a significant burden," Jatres says. "The $75 fee for commercial use — it's left fairly vague. Could be couriers, bike rentals, anything. If you use a bicycle as transportation for work, could that be broadly defined as commercial? It left it vague enough where that line between commercial and personal could be blurry."

The ordinance does not spell out how NOPD would enforce registration, which Jatres and other cyclists fear could result in potential harassment. The MBC says it's received complaints from cyclists saying NOPD officers have stopped them and told them to ride on the sidewalk or to wear a helmet, neither of which are laws in Louisiana.

"There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding among at least some officers within the department, which leads to the concern — here's one more tool that can be interpreted or misused, either out of ignorance of the law or intentions to harass cyclists," Jatres says. "That was what hit Councilman Carter, 'OK, we really need to get everyone in a room to talk about this.'"

Every now and then a new NOPD initiative proposes to crack down on existing but dormant regulations.  Last year City Council passed an ordinance presented as "protection" for bicyclists but really it just created new ways to bring them under the enforcement regime.  Jared Brossett's quote tips it.  The primary purpose of this was to crack down on cyclists. 

The new rules, recommended by the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Advisory Committee, explicitly prohibit motorists from driving in designated bike lanes or harassing cyclists, clarify that pedestrians have the right of way in crosswalks and require that bikes must be equipped with lights or reflectors plus bells or other devices that can provide an audible signal to those nearby in emergency situations.

“All roadway users have a responsibility to use roads safely,” said Councilman Jared Brossett, who sponsored the ordinances.

At the same time, the city has heralded its placement of bike lanes all over town as a signal of its progressive orientation.  But cycling advocates have complained the painted lanes are more ornamental than useful and often are safety hazards themselves.  This suggests our new bike centered infrastructure, including the recently launched for-profit bike share program, isn't designed to meet transit needs as much as it is to boost real estate values.

Those bike-docking stations, however, also give Fleming pause. He resists using the term "bike share" to describe them. Instead, they are "bike rental kiosks," he said.

His reasoning is economic. He worries that a kiosk in a low-income neighborhood would give landlords with properties nearby license to label that block "up-and-coming" and raise rents.

In other words, he sees a bike-sharing program as a harbinger of gentrification and its unsavory cousin: the displacement of the poor.

Over the weekend, I heard a few stories about bikes tied up near the convention center receiving warning stickers that they had been improperly parked. In recent years, new prohibitions against parking bikes in what one would think are harmless places have sprung up in an ad-hoc fashion all over town. We've documented some of these. It's probably a coincidence that we're being made to feel less free about riding our own bikes in downtown neighborhoods at the same time that the Blue Bikes monopoly is spreading out over the same area. But the lifestyle is becoming more regimented in any case. A thousand dollar ticket for not being "registered" is sure to make anyone more wary.

"That's more than my rent. That's more than a number of different things," Louis said.

"I think the police has a lot of discretion in terms of issuing a citation," Charlie Thomas, Louis' attorney said.

Thomas works with the firm Huber, Thomas and Marcelle. They are statewide attorneys for bike law. He is calling the prices for these citations outrageous and believes there is no use registration ordinance in the city.

"Even though NOPD might have your bicycle information on file, we're unaware of any circumstance where this has led to the recovery of a stolen bike or really any sort of benefit," Thomas said.

The benefit to NOPD doesn't have anything to do with solving bike thefts, though. It's just a tool for city officials to use as they continue to embrace widely discredited "broken windows" policing techniques. LaToya's recently expressed enthusiasm for surveillance "Quality and Neighborhood Safety" cameras indicates that's not going to change any time soon.

On the other hand, that WWLTV story does say that the mayor personally emailed Louis about his ticket this afternoon and is "willing to work with him," whatever that means. So the lesson here for cyclists is, if you get stopped and harassed by a cop, (and manage to avoid getting shot, of course) make sure you get yourself on the news.  This mayor seems to respond if the uptick is big enough. Not sure if that really scales up as a citywide policy but, to be fair, I have not yet fully grasped the #CityOfYes ethos. Maybe it has something to do with being intentional.