Ghost bus

 Clearly this app is haunted.

RTA launched a new app called Le Pass in August 2022. The app uses GPS technology to track buses. While it does include information about route delays, Ride says the updates don’t appear quickly enough, leaving riders waiting at stops with no idea when to expect to get picked up or whether they should change their transportation plans.  

“What we’re frustrated by is that we don’t have real information from the RTA on how the service issues are affecting different parts of the system,” Buckley said. 

Buckley said riders are reporting to Ride that sometimes the Le Pass app will sometimes show a bus’ location where there is no bus and sometimes a bus will be running and won’t show up on the app. 

And when a bus breakdown causes a delay, the app only tells users there are “significant delays,” but it doesn’t offer added information about a vehicle being taken off its line.

That's great. I've literally had RTA workers tell me not to use Le Pass. It can't even tell you whether or not a real bus is coming, let alone begin to figure out why it isn't. 

Hankins said she’s trying to work on getting more accurate information out to the public, but it’s hard to know how long a delay might take. 

“What I have gleaned from my peers across the country is they will say there is an incident on this line [or] police activity on this line, but they can’t describe how long the delay will be. Whereas our app just says there’s a delay. And so how do we … give riders better information?” Hankins asked. “That is something I’m challenging our team to try to figure out.”

To be fair, there are a lot of factors to consider in estimating delays in New Orleans. Maybe a tree has fallen on a bus. That could take an hour or so. A flooded street might mean two or three hours. But what if a sinkhole has swallowed a bus whole?  That might take longer. Perhaps a building has collapsed onto a streetcar line.  Now we are talking about a years' long delay.  All of this may be beyond the app's ability to compute efficiently.

Or maybe the delay is caused by something more mundane. Like, for example, decades of negligence. 

On its worst day the agency had only 78 buses available. At its best, it had 89, one shy of what the agency says is the ideal number — 90 buses — to accommodate. 

In an interview last month, RTA CEO Lona Edwards Hankins acknowledged that the transit agency is facing a number of challenges in providing reliable service to its bus riders. 

The fleet size is down by more than 50 percent from its pre-Katrina number, when it was about 370 strong, according to media reports from the time. Much of that fleet — about 200 buses — was destroyed in the citywide flooding that followed the 2005 storm, The Times-Picayune reported in 2009, and the remaining buses were aging out of usefulness. 

After receiving funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and settling with its insurance company, the RTA purchased 137 new buses between 2008 and 2012, officials told Verite.

But Hankins, who was named CEO in March, said there wasn’t a long-term purchasing plan in place.

Whatever the case, you're probably gonna be waiting a while. Maybe just have the app say that.

It might be time to dump Transdev

The T-P ran a pretty good feature last weekend on one of the more striking failures of the "Regional Transit Authority."  It has never managed to become "regional" in any respect other than its name.  Parish participation in RTA is voluntary and, over the years, all but Orleans Parish have opted out leaving the region with separate and largely incompatible transit systems.

This is particularity frustrating for riders in Jefferson and Orleans who need to cross between the state's two most populous parishes on their daily commutes.

No one has tallied exactly how much this hurts riders and our region's economy. But hurt it does, experts agree. Like Stevens, riders must spend hours taking several buses, many of which require a transfer from one parish's transit system to another -- a burden that tends to disproportionately affects lower-income workers who most rely on public transit.

I should point out there are some problems with this article. Despite this bit about the "burden on lower-income workers" the story gives too much emphasis to the needs of employers and of people like Michael Hecht who really just need the transit system to be efficient at getting the low-income workforce in and out of the gentrified city where they obviously are not expected to live anymore.

Also, in that vein, it repeatedly asserts that transit problems were a knock against the New Orleans area in the Amazon HQ sweepstakes, again, under the assumption that "winning" that race to the corporate welfare bottom was actually a desirable outcome.

All that aside, the articles do point out one commonality between RTA and JET.  Both systems are currently operated by the same private company.

One idea floated during interviews is to consolidate the operations of neighboring transit agencies under a single operator. Sharonda Williams, the most recent chairwoman of the RTA, says that could theoretically be done through a multi-parish cooperative endeavor agreement.

It's not a stretch of the imagination: RTA and Jefferson Transit are both currently managed by Paris-based Transdev , though the two parishes have separate contracts with the company. Transdev also runs ferry service for RTA from Algiers to Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish, marking a rare stroke of regionalism loosely organized around one company.

Unfortunately no one in this story asks why we couldn't consolidate systems and boot Transdev out anyway. Its RTA contract is expiring next year. Transit activists and watchdog groups are already suggesting that RTA consider other options before renewing.

TransitCenter unveiled a study last year that criticized the RTA’s lack of in-house oversight of Transdev, depicting the arrangement as an example of the pitfalls that can occur under such public-private partnerships.

The groups don't explicitly say the PPP model should be abandoned but they do suggest looking at different operators and the structure of the working relationship.  Interestingly, the newly appointed interim director had a hand in a Landrieu administration push for more hands-on control from the RTA side of things.  Not sure what that means going forward but one thing that does deserve attention is the relative inefficiency of the current arrangement.

RTA collected more than $75 million in state and local sales taxes, and about $18 million in fares last year, according to its financial statements. Compare that with the roughly $13 million total budget approved this year for Jefferson Transit, which makes around $3 million annually in fares and $6.5 million from two millages.

"We don't have extra money," said Sharon Leader, JeT's executive director. "For transit, you need a lot of money."

Ride New Orleans' annual report acknowledged that high costs pose a barrier for more service "both in terms of pure cost and in rallying public support and trust for additional founding." The advocacy group said among 20 comparable peer transit agencies, the RTA had the second highest operating costs in 2015 at $134 per bus operating hour. Only Detroit was higher.

 What is the point of contracting out operations at all, let alone to Transdev in particular? 

Rickshaw renewal

Pedicab "pilot period" extended to 9/15/2013. Gisleson Palmer says it has been a successful program. Council committee report due in June.
— The_GambitLIVE (@The_GambitLIVE) April 11, 2013

Between these, the buggies,  the big red buses, the little go cart rentals, the segway tours, and apparently now the Duck Tours there sure are a lot of ways for people to visit our famously "walkable" downtown and not walk anywhere.

Does wonders for vehicular traffic too.


Poydras and Camp Easter Sunday 2013

To put it another way, they just don't want to

DOTD isn't interested in a temporary fix for the bridge lights.

An offer by the Young Leadership Council to pay the electric bill until the May 4 election can't be accepted in time to avoid the lights going out, State Representative Austin Badon said.

According to Badon, the DOTD told him the state cannot enter agreement with civic group offering to pay light bill. He says an offer like that would have to be made to the city of New Orleans or the Regional Planning Commission. That group would then request that the DOTD keep the lights on.

If they kept the lights on, they wouldn't have any means of frightening voters before the election.

Indentured Servitude

This is an interesting Lens article I missed last week about the market for city cab licenses.

Because the sale of these licenses,termed Certificates of Public Necessity and Convenience (CNPCs), is controlled by private brokers, the city sees only a miniscule percentage of what is estimated to be an $8 million market in transfers. At least I take it, that's the above-the-table market anyway. Meanwhile the brokers and cab company owners charge their drivers as much as $350 per week in rental fees on their cabs leaving us with a system whose benefits accrue almost exclusively to the owners at the expense of both the drivers and the city.

The city could have retained control of the market for cab permits over the years and capitalized on their value to offset the cost of taxpayer-financed services such as libraries, parks, or policing.

“At a time when the city is looking for additional financial resources, we should explore all possible revenue streams,” City Councilman Arnie Fielkow wrote in an emailed statement.

The City Council’s Transportation Committee Chairwoman, Kristin Gisleson Palmer, went much further, although she would only address the industry generally, and not discuss specific companies.

“I believe the whole system needs to be reformed, and we’re working with the administration to do that,” she said. “This system with CPNCs being sold even though it’s technically the city’s property, the city of New Orleans has seen no economic benefit from those transfers, and I’m not sure whether all of those transfers have even been notified to the city.”

She said she wants changes that will make it easier for drivers to get a certificate.

“I think the process also creates a system where the little guy cannot afford to purchase a CPNC number, and has to lease out the use of the number,” Gisleson Palmer said. “So you have many drivers out there without benefits, medical, who are just leasing the CPNCs, and you create a system of indentured servitude.”

Update: Just wanted to add one thing here. Ann Duplessis and Ryan Berni, in this quote, illustrate everything that is wrong with New Orleans and its current administration right now.

Deputy Mayor Duplessis said the administration is reviewing the section of city law that governs cab regulation to see what changes might be made. But the review will not be complete until sometime in 2012 and even then, Duplessis isn’t sure whether the city should change.

Duplessis said one of the priorities for the overhauled department was “building a brand” for the city’s cab industry, and that opening up the market for cab certificates may, or may not, come later.

“But we’re definitely going to look at it,” Duplessis said.

One reason it is difficult to reshape the system is that private interests stand to lose a great deal of money from any reforms, and the administration has been meeting with cab companies as it looks to shape its new approach.

“There will always be people in these entrenched industries with interests at the table,” said Landrieu spokesman Ryan Berni.

Duplessis is telling us that the city's "reform" priority is a completely irrelevant style-over-substance "branding" initiative. I wonder how many marketing consultants they've hired to assist them with this. Meanwhile Berni is telling us the reason we can expect little more than ineffectual action from the city is that the people they're "meeting with" and whose interests they're going to protect are the "entrenched" brokers.

One step away from Baghdad Bike Lanes

Iraq: France's Alstom signs high-speed rail line deal The baby of the empire always gets the nice toys.

Update: Tangent About those bike lanes.

Now, City Councilman Eric Ulrich, R-Ozone Park, has had enough, saying the agency has forgotten its core mission — fixing the roads.

“Why can’t we just we get back to basics and worry more about paving the roads and the streets than we are about installing bike lanes and putting in pedestrian plazas where communities don’t want them?” Ulrich told CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.

“The roads in Baghdad look better than the roads in Queens. I think I have a right to be upset.”

The harsh words came at a City Council hearing on the pedestrian plazas installed by the DOT. Ulrich wasn’t alone as several others talked about a belief there is an anti-driver bias.

I'm not so sure what's going on in New York City and elsewhere is best described as an "anti-driver bias" though. I've made this point before but I tend to skew pro bicycle and anti-bike lane. Bike lanes not only make getting around less convenient and more dangerous for cyclists but they're more importantly a means of policing and ticketing a heretofore unharassed pool of vehicles, which seems to be the fashion these days.

While I like living where I can bike or walk to most day-to-day destinations, I'm not an evangelist about this lifestyle. I recognize that most adults either need or prefer to drive most of the time and that's okay. I also sympathize with their perception that their lives are being made more difficult. While urban cores in older cities may be re-engineered to become more bike or pedestrian friendly, this is far less true of the suburbs. I also happen to think we're living in a time when suburban living is becoming less and less desirable for those who can afford to move back to into the gentrifying cities. So, in addition to everything else, the bike lane is itself a gentrification tool as well.

The railroad doesn't have to do anything

So they won't.

Getting Norfolk Southern to the table, however, may not be easy, judging from a response the company sent to The Lens this week. When asked if they would consider granting a right-of-way for a streetcar to cross Press Street, Norfolk Southern spokesman Rudy Husband highlighted the same safety concerns that have historically halted conversations. “We are opposed to an at-grade railroad crossing at Press Street because it would create an unsafe situation for both streetcar and freight rail,” he said.

Like we were saying last week, railroads have a tremendous amount of power and can basically do or not do whatever they feel like. Mostly they feel like running hazardous freight through populated areas without assuming much liability for the risks involved in that.

What they don't do so well in this country are transport projects like inter-city high speed passenger rail or even making minor accommodations for local public transit initiatives like figuring out how get one streetcar line across Press street.

Picking the poison

For all the furor that rail transit critics like to generate over the dark spectre of (highly profitable) "levitating trains to Disneyland" you rarely hear them complain about the sorts of things we actually use rail transport for in this country, such as daily of shipments of poisonous chemicals through your neighborhood.

While Millar called the switch to bleach a "blessing," he cautioned that railroads, which are federally regulated, are allowed to carry many dangerous chemicals through urban areas, opening the door to accidents and terrorist attacks.

"If your city got successfully attacked, it would be a serious blow to the tourism industry, not only of New Orleans but of the country and maybe even the world," he said. "So you have more reason than most people to know what's being transported through your city."

Such accidents do, in fact, happen. And when they do they're much more serious than "a blow to the tourism industry" as that consultant so distastefully puts it. They affect the safety and health of actual residents who, if they're lucky, will spend subsequent decades fighting the railroad in court over an ever-diminishing compensatory sum. Take, for example, this quick trip down memory lane via the T-P archives.

Judge approves CSX settlement amount - Firm owned track where fire erupted
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) - Wednesday, April 3, 2002
Author: Susan Finch Staff writer
A class-action lawsuit over a 1987 chemical tank car fire that spewed fumes and ash into a Gentilly neighborhood moved closer to an end Tuesday when a judge approved a $220 million partial settlement to be paid by CSX Transportation Inc., owner of the track where the tank car was parked, and its insurers.

How much of the $220 million goes to each of the just over 9,000 plaintiffs, after deductions for their attorneys’ fees and the costs of administering the case, will be decided in later hearings before a special master appointed by Judge Wallace Edwards, who is overseeing the case. Checks will likely be ready for distribution this fall, one attorney said.

During a five-hour hearing at City Hall, Edwards also agreed to reserve 40 percent of the $220 million from which to pay the plaintiffs’ attorneys, who have fronted the cost of pursuing the case for 14 years. But he warned that doesn’t mean the lawyers will get 40 percent.

The CSX settlement is the second in the massive case, which went to trial in 1997 and ended with a New Orleans jury concluding nine companies were negligent in the accident caused when the chemical butadiene leaking from the tank car caught fire .

Six of the companies reached a $215 million settlement with residents in 2000, and that money has been parceled out. Attorneys got just over 38 percent as fees. Negotiations with two remaining defendants in the case are continuing.

By agreeing to the $220 million settlement, CSX avoids having to pay punitive damages set at $850 million by Judge Wallace Edwards, who has presided in the long-running case. It also makes the company’s appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court moot.

New Orleans attorney Russ Herman, testifying as an expert in class-action cases for the plaintiffs’ management committee, advised accepting the CSX settlement now, given the fact that lawmakers both in Louisiana and in Congress are increasingly inclined to do away with punitive damage awards. Had the accident happened in 1997, when the case went to trial, punitive damages would not have been an option because the Legislature had already changed the law.

Edwards agreed: "A settlement like this, to me, is like a bird in the hand versus two in the bush," he said. He added that the case has been "an unbelievable struggle" that he’s eager to end and move on to other things: "I’ve got a new John Deere tractor that has four-wheel drive and a bush hog on it," he said.

More than 200 people packed into the City Council chamber for the hearing, and many others were left outside because there weren’t enough seats. Joseph Bruno, an attorney for the residents, said that no one who objected to the settlement amount was denied entrance.

Special master Patrick Juneau had overruled all objections that were filed before Tuesday, but he had asked the judge to hear those who were complaining for the first time.

One of them, Clementine Mims, said, "I feel $220 million isn’t sufficient enough for the 14 years I and my son have lived in fear of (contracting) cancer" from breathing fumes from the chemical fire . They have also suffered financial damage, she said.

New objections filed Tuesday will be addressed at later hearings before the special master.

You forgot Poland (avenue)

I know it's difficult to get over the railroad tracks, but the St. Claude streetcar really should go all the way to Poland Avenue before they include this less important spur.

The phase-one plan to run tracks along Elysian Fields linking the Riverfront line to the new North Rampart/St. Claude line makes sense, but it adds over 20% to the project cost while introducing few if any new riders to the system. The residents and visitors served by the spur are already within walking distance of the major lines. Worse yet, the Elysian Fields segment will reduce the frequency of service on the North Rampart/St. Claude line; every third or fourth streetcar will turn down Elysian Fields rather than continuing on to the Press Street terminus.

Schwartz has a few other good ideas in that Lens op-ed. Go take a look. Although, every time I look at his giant Monorail! map I have to chuckle a little bit.

Tuesday Link Dump

• Audit finds widespread accounting problems at nonprofit linked to Jefferson Parish councilman
  
  Dambala suggests that Lee, a close ally of Congressman-elect Cedric Richmond, was planning to go to Washington with him.



• Pat attends and takes detailed notes on James Carville's Bipartisan Policy Center's post-election conference at Tulane.
  
  When I saw this event announced, I'll admit I was less than enthusiastic about being invited to listen to Carville-Matlin along with the likes of Tony Blankley, Paul Begala and "some of America's top political journalists and and analysts" (no relation to the "world's most visionary intellects" but I can see how one might make that mistake) fart out of their mouths about "bipartisanship" all day long. Neither the twittering from attendees nor Pat's note taking has done much to change my mind. If I have to sit within earshot of a plutocratic tool like Dan Glickman lamenting the lack of "civic literacy" among the rabble, or a repulsive toad like Dan Bartlett complaining that Rahm fucking Emmanuel's problem is that he is too liberal, then they damn sure better let me bring my durian catapult in with me. Otherwise I'll wait for the DVD to come out so I can give my cat a new scratching toy for Christmas.
  
  Nevertheless, it is worth noting what these gasbags are blowing at us since it will doubtlessly crystallize into the next broken rhetoric trap impeding progress until the whole thing starts over again with the next election cycle. Please take the time to look at Pat's write-up. As with everything he presents, it is patiently and thoughtfully written. I have a few bones to pick with it but I'm saving those for a much longer post about the re-emergence of the do-nothing mushy pseudo-left which we're going to watch get bulldozed by the incoming Republican congress these next few years.
  
  One observation Pat calls special attention to is the puzzling "deference to the Tea Party" exhibited by the assembled mainstream pundits. Here, Pat describes the Tea Party pretty well.

  I wish we had an actual movement in this nation expressing libertarian, foundational views of this republic; I’ve long held that I may not agree with Ron Paul or Paul Ryan on the issues, but they are legitimately held positions that represent a legitimate understanding of history and economics, and represent a competing vision for this country’s future. I think there are some individuals who consider themselves “Tea Partiers” who believe that they are doing something similar.
  
  The Tea Party I have seen is not that, however. In their own words, it has morphed into a Christianist, xenophobic and intolerant movement that supports high spending, government violation of civil liberties, religious oppression, endless war (Iran is next!), subsidization of the uberwealthy and unilateral foreign policy. Once they have enunciated those positions, they turn around and posses the historical amnesia to dismiss hard-fought American social advancements, and ascribe tyrant status to President Obama and Democratic members of Congress for “controlling every aspect of our lives” in ways that the government has done for decades, if not centuries. These aren’t new arguments, by the way.

  No they aren't new arguments. And more importantly, the "Tea Party" isn't a new "party" or movement or anything new at all really. It is, as Pat also points out, merely the latest marketing strategy for the same right wing agenda that has dominated our politics for most of my increasingly long lifetime. It's a marketing strategy aimed at misdirecting legitimate working class discontent so that it ultimately furthers the plutocratic interests. I know. You're bored with hearing that. I am too. But as long as we've got one party willing to lie and pander to an increasingly impoverished population while the other sneers and condescends at it, this is what we're stuck with; a bi-partisan, cynical hostility of the ruling classes toward the rest of us.
  
  Unsurprisingly, Clancy DuBos attended the same conference where his big takeaway was, "Most important of all, Independents believe both parties should move more to the center." But both parties are already at "the center." They aren't exactly the same party but they do both agree to serve slightly varied schisms of the money power at the expense of the rest of us. As long as mainstream punditry misrepresents the less meaningful distinctions between the parties as "uncivil partisanship" this will remain the case.
  



• Along those same lines regarding tea party phoniness and civil discourse see this Drake Toulouse post.

  On the Sunday morning talk shows, Rand Paul, Kentucky’s newest senator criticized Barack Obama for being too harsh with British Petroleum. “I didn’t think the president or his people should say something like putting the boot heel on the throat of a business. I didn’t like that,” Paul said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation. His main point of contention appears to be that Obama set the wrong tone, engaged in creating an atmosphere that is unfriendly to business.
  
  Ya, I get it, boot heels and throats are a rather unfriendly way of speaking to an oil company, however considering that this oil spill occurred almost seven months ago, and yet no charges have been brought against anyone, I would say that BP, Halliburton and Transocean, yet again, are getting off light for, yet another, accident.

  But at least we'll have a more civil tone, which is the important thing.
  



• The Lens reminds us that this is "Transit Week"

  Our transit advocacy organization, Transport for NOLA, is promoting New Orleans’ first Transit Week, starting today. Try taking transit to work or recreation at least once during this week. Visit our website at www.transportfornola.org/transitweek for schedules, maps, and information on how to take transit. Let us know how it went and how it can be better.




• Arianna Huffington steals rather than creates something. And this is somehow news.



• Hornets lose. Now Monty Williams doesn't have to worry about deciding between resting his starters and preserving a perfect season anymore.



• Sarah Palin is un-refudiated by OED as her coinage is named the word of the year.



• And on that note, To Moscow, You Betcha! runs for two showings tomorrow night (7PM and 9PM) at John Paul's (940 Elysian Fields) and again on Sunday night at 7PM. Good times.

Will Jindal let us have this?

I mean, by all appearances, this is a train from New Orleans to Disneyworld

Maybe as long as it doesn't levitate, he's cool with it.