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    New Orleans:: The Canal Streetcar Line
    New Orleans:: The Canal Streetcar Line
    New Orleans:: The Canal Streetcar Line
    Ebook188 pages1 hour

    New Orleans:: The Canal Streetcar Line

    By Edward J. Branley

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    About this ebook

    The clanging of a streetcar's bell conjures images of a time when street railways were a normal part of life in the city. Historic Canal Street represents the common ground between old and new with buses driving alongside steel rails and electric wires that once guided streetcars.New Orleans was one of the first cities to embrace street railways, and the city's love affair with streetcars has never ceased. New Orleans: The Canal Streetcar Line showcases photographs, diagrams, and maps that detail the rail line from its origin and golden years, its decline and disappearance for almost 40 years, and its return to operation. From the French Quarter to the cemeteries, the Canal Line ran through the heart of the city and linked the Creole Faubourgs with the new neighborhoods that stretched to Lake Pontchartrain.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439629505
    New Orleans:: The Canal Streetcar Line
    Author

    Edward J. Branley

    New Orleans native Edward J. Branley is a former high school history teacher. He has written five books for Arcadia Publishing, including Legendary Locals of New Orleans and Images of America books New Orleans: The Canal Streetcar Line, Maison Blanche Department Store and New Orleans Jazz. He is graduate of Brother Martin High School in New Orleans and the University of New Orleans.

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      Book preview

      New Orleans: - Edward J. Branley

      Orleans.

      INTRODUCTION

      It’s a paradox.

      Streetcars and Canal Street, that is. Maybe it’s because the St. Charles Avenue line has been operating continuously since 1834. Maybe it’s Streetcar Named Desire. Maybe it’s because the Canal line vanished for almost 40 years. Whatever the reason why people don’t connect Canal Street with our streetcars, the fact is that New Orleans’s streetcars always have been about getting people to Canal.

      Canal Street has been the primary traffic artery for downtown New Orleans and the French Quarter for over 150 years. Its unusual width (170 feet) and its position as the boundary between the old section of the city with the newer (and expanding) business district attracted a wide variety of businesses, stores, and shops. In addition to commercial activity, Canal Street became the hub for transportation in the city. Major railroads terminated either on Canal or within blocks of the street. The ferry connecting the main part of the city on the east bank of the Mississippi River with the western side was at the foot of Canal Street. In short, if you had to get someplace, your trip most likely involved going to Canal Street.

      Transporting people downtown was an entrepreneurial opportunity throughout the 19th century. Private companies would identify the need for various neighborhoods to have a connection to downtown and would establish omnibus or street rail (using horse- and mule-drawn cars) to meet the need. While this was good from the perspective of free enterprise, the myriad of street railway operators in the city made for a complex maze of tracks and routes. Electrification in the 1890s changed that, forcing the small operators to merge with larger companies. By 1905, New Orleans had 191 miles of streetcar track, and Canal Street was hub, with almost every operating line using Canal as an inbound terminus. From Rampart Street to South Peters (by the river), streetcars would turn onto Canal from connecting streets, travel a block or two on the main artery, then turn away from Canal to return to the neighborhoods from which they originated.

      It’s all about getting to Canal.

      Then there is the Canal Street line itself. Originally operated by the New Orleans City Railroad Company, the line opened on June 15, 1861. The line ran from the car barn on White Street to St. Charles Avenue. On August 24, 1861, the line was extended to run to the end of Canal Street, where there is a large concentration of cemeteries. This extension enabled anyone in the city to get to the cemeteries as well as the Mid-City neighborhoods along the way. The line’s animal power was replaced with electric cars on August 1, 1894.

      The period from the 1890s to the 1930s marked a time where streetcars were extremely popular across the United States. New Orleans was no exception to this, with track mileage reaching a peak of 225 miles in 1922. Street railway companies acquired and operated a number of different types of vehicles during this period, starting with the small, single-truck cars, then using double-truck semi-convertibles on busier lines.

      The uncoordinated growth of electric railways in New Orleans reached a point by the 1920s that an overall plan had to be developed. A single operating company, New Orleans Public Service, Inc. (NOPSI), was formed. The city gave NOPSI control of New Orleans’s electricity, gas, and transit services in 1922, and almost immediately the company began to consolidate street railway routes and equipment. The elegant Palace cars, which ran the Canal Belt line, were phased out in favor of the new arch roof cars from the Perley A. Thomas Company. By 1935, the arch roof cars dominated the city-wide streetcar fleet and were regular fixtures on Canal Street.

      The rise of the streetcar so closely identified with New Orleans came at a time when streetcars overall were in decline. The economic growth of the 1920s evaporated with the Great Depression, and NOPSI saw its future in buses, not streetcars. Neighborhood lines were converted to buses, and by 1940, the number of track miles had dropped from a high of 225 to 109. World War II placed an external hold on the decline of streetcars, in the form of the Office of Defense Transportation’s freeze on abandoning street railways. Abandonment picked up in 1946 where it left off before the war, and by 1953, there were only two streetcar lines left in New Orleans: St. Charles and Canal. It looked like the citizens of The City That Care Forgot had forgotten to care about their street railways.

      NOPSI’s efforts to eliminate the last two streetcar lines in the city grew stronger in the late 1950s. The primary target of these efforts was the Canal line. Transit riders from Lakeview chafed at having to switch from air-conditioned buses at the cemeteries to the older, poorly maintained streetcars. The company rode the tide of rider dissatisfaction to the city council in the summer of 1963 and secured approval to replace streetcars with buses on Canal Street. In typical New Orleans fashion, organized opposition arose only after the deal was done. By the following summer, one block of track remained of what was once a thriving four-track main line.

      Buses have ruled Canal Street for almost 40 years. NOPSI was finally allowed to give up the city’s transit system in 1983, and the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) breathed new life into the notion of street railways in the city. The Riverfront line began operations in 1988. The one-block section of track on Canal was expanded in 1997, when the lower blocks of the street were used to connect the Riverfront with St. Charles Avenue, so the new streetcars could return to the uptown car barn. A combination of hard work on the part of RTA, city government, and elected officials in Washington secured approval to revive the Canal line. Construction of streetcars and track began in 1999, and the line went operational in the fall of 2003.

      The role of Canal Street has changed dramatically during the 40-year hiatus of the streetcar line. The new streetcars won’t be bringing people to a shopping district; that role has long since passed to suburban malls. The streetcar will offer a viable mass-transit option to downtown workers and locals going to the casino or the Quarter. It will also be an attractive way for tourists to venture away from the Quarter, to hopefully explore Mid-City and cemeteries at the end of Canal. The spur line on North Carrollton Avenue will entice visitors

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