RTA floats proposal for 3 new streetcar lines in New Orleans

New Orleans transit planners hope to expand streetcar service to the North Rampart Street and St. Claude Avenue corridor, Loyola Avenue and Convention Center Boulevard, The Times-Picayune reports. Armed with a $212-million financing plan for three new streetcar lines that includes substantial local investment, Regional Transit Authority officials are hopeful that federal officials will look kindly on the ambitious project and agree to pick up more than half its cost.  

Since Hurricane Katrina wiped out more than 70
percent of its ridership, the cash-poor RTA has been unable to borrow money.
But last month, the rating agency Standard & Poor’s, thanks to steps taken
recently to stabilize RTA finances, raised the authority’s bond rating to
investment grade for the first time since the storm.

For more than a year, New Orleans transit planners
have been exploring ways to expand the streetcar network by bringing service to
the North Rampart Street and St. Claude Avenue corridor, Loyola Avenue and
Convention Center Boulevard. But before the upgrade in the bond rating, the RTA
wasn’t in a position to bring much to the table.

Buoyed by its new-found borrowing power, the RTA is
preparing to ask the federal government to allocate about $121 million, about
57 percent of the estimated price tag to build the three rail lines. The lion’s
share of the rest — $73.5 million — would come from the sale of bonds backed
by sales-tax collections allocated to the RTA. The agency also proposes using
$13 million from a reserve account and $5 million the RTA has recouped from the
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center for a stalled expansion.

Even with the local investment, the streetcar proposal
likely will be a tough sell. The RTA funding strategy counts on getting $95.6
million — nearly half the project’s projected cost — from a component of the
federal stimulus package known as the Transportation Investment Generating
Economic Recovery, or TIGER, grant program. The $1.5 billion fund pays 100
percent of the construction costs of selected projects. Competition for the
grants is expected to be fierce, as transit systems across the nation vie for
light rail projects, new buses and improvements to roads and repair and
administrative facilities.

The RTA also could be pitted against in-state
rivals, including the state itself. The Department of Transportation and
Development is considering applying for more than $200 million in TIGER dollars
to fill the budget gap in big-ticket items such as construction of segments of
Interstate 49. Under law, no more than $300 million of the $1.5 billion can be
awarded to one state.

The deadline to apply for the TIGER program is Sept.
15. Anxious to launch brick-and-mortar projects that will create jobs, the
White House has pledged to announce recipients of the money in January.

Under the RTA plan, about 12 percent of the money
would come from $25 million in grants awarded by the Federal Transportation
Administration. That agency in recent years has frowned on getting involved in
projects unless at least half the cost is paid locally, a threshold the
streetcar plan just misses. But RTA officials they believe the local money they
are pledging will be sufficient to win over the FTA. If nothing else, RTA
managers said the faith of one of the nation’s major bond rating firms has put
the agency in a much better position.

"It shows that they believe we’ve begun to put
our fiscal house in order, " said Justin Augustine, the RTA’s chief
executive officer and a vice president at Veolia Transportation, the French
conglomerate that runs New Orleans’ transit system. "They like our
vision."

Since Veolia took over daily management of the
system last fall, the company has slashed costs, including payroll, and
improved services. And while ridership is still only a fraction of the
pre-storm level, the numbers have grown slowly but steadily.

All three streetcar lines being proposed would link
to the Canal Street line. The St. Claude route, which would stretch from the
French Quarter to Bywater, has been well-received by residents who live near
and along the corridor. Dubbed the "French Quarter loop," the line
would travel about four miles along North Rampart Street from Canal Street to
Press Street and would feature a 1.2-mile spur on Elysian Fields Avenue that
would connect with the Riverfront streetcar line at Esplanade Avenue. The cost
estimate for the project is $115.2 million.

The Convention Center Boulevard line would travel
Uptown from Canal Street via Tchoupitoulas and Poydras streets to Convention
Center Boulevard, where it would travel Uptown before turning toward the river
at Henderson Street and connecting with the Riverfront streetcar line behind
the Convention Center. It would span 1.8 miles and cost about $51.3 million.

The 1.5-mile Union Passenger Terminal route would
travel along Loyola Avenue between Canal Street and the Greyhound and Amtrak
terminals. Under the RTA’s plan, the $45.6-million line is the only one of the
three that would be fully financed by the federal government.