New Orleans Regional Transit Authority

New Orleans Regional Transit Authority

250px
250px RTA building on Canal Street
Founded	1983
Headquarters	New Orleans, Louisiana
Service area	City of New Orleans and Orleans Parish, Louisiana
Service type	Public Transit Heritage streetcar
Routes	30 (bus) 5 (streetcar)
Stops	2154 (bus) 286 (streetcar)
Annual ridership	18,634,500+ (2013)
Fuel type	Diesel (bus) Electric (streetcar)
Operator	Transdev
Website	[2]

Streetcar network

File:CanalCemsKeepItCleanTram.jpg

Streetcar on Canal Street, April 2007

The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA or NORTA) is a public transportation agency based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Since 1983 it has operated bus and historic streetcar service throughout the city. With an annual ridership of over 18.6 million riders, the Regional Transit Authority is the largest public transit agency in the state of Louisiana.

Hurricane Katrina

City buses were used before Hurricane Katrina hit to transport people to a refuge of last resort, the Louisiana Superdome. Much of the city flooded due to the storm. The NORTA Administration building on Plaza Drive appears to have been in 10 feet (3.0 m) of water. Almost eighty-five percent of the fleet was rendered useless and inoperative; 146 city buses were visible outdoors in the flood at the 2817 Canal St. facility, while only 22 were at 3900 Desire Pky. The 8201 Willow St. facility was one block within the flood but was built above street level. The buses at the flooded facilities were mostly written off.

All but one of the streetcars built in the 1990s and 2000s were severely damaged in the flooding resulting from the hurricane. The historic Perley Thomas-built streetcars of the St. Charles line were undamaged in the disaster. The damaged streetcars, which had been built by hand on the property by local workers, were repaired in the same facility with components from Brookville Equipment Co.

Post-disaster recovery

As of 2007, service was restored to certain areas as they become habitable again. However, there is no 24-hour service on any bus or streetcar line, except for the St. Charles streetcar line. Streetcars were returned to the full length of Canal St. and the Riverfront, initially using the historic St. Charles Line streetcars, which had not been damaged, as had the red Canal cars. In 2008, the St. Charles streetcar resumed running the entire length of its route. By early 2009, the red Canal streetcars were repaired and had taken over service on the Canal and Riverfront Lines. The buses that have been restored to operation have returned to several major thoroughfares, including Elysian Fields Avenue, Esplanade Avenue, Claiborne Avenue, St. Claude Avenue, Judge Perez Drive, General Meyer Avenue, Lapalco Boulevard, Robert E. Lee Boulevard, and the Chef Menteur Highway. And just a few express routes, Morrison Express, Lake Forest Express and Read-Crowder Express, all serving Eastern New Orleans, have been reinstated so far.

Bus & Streetcar Route List

• 2 Riverfront Streetcar
• 5 Marigny-Bywater
• 10 Tchoupitoulas
• 11 Magazine
• 12 St. Charles Streetcar
• 15 Freret
• 16 S. Claiborne
• 27 Louisiana
• 28 M.L. King
• 32 Leonidas/Orleans-Treme
• 39 Tulane
• 45 Lakeview
• 47 Canal Streetcar to Cemeteries
• 48 Canal Streetcar to City Park/Museum
• 49 Loyola/UPT Streetcar
• 51 St. Bernard - Paris Ave.
• 52 St. Bernard - St. Anthony
• 55 Elysian Fields
• 57 Franklin
• 60 Hayne
• 62 Morrison Express
• 63 New Orleans East Owl
• 64 Lake Forest Express
• 65 Read-Crowder Express
• 80 Desire-Louisa
• 84 Galvez
• 88 St. Claude
• 90 Carrollton
• 91 Jackson-Esplanade
• 94 Broad
• 100 Algiers Owl
• 101 Algiers Point
• 102 General Meyer/Whitney
• 106 Aurora Local
• 108 Algiers Local
• 114 General DeGaulle - Sullen
• 115 General DeGaulle - Tullis
• 201 Kenner Loop
• 408 Algiers Local-L.B. Landry

Investigation of potential copyright issue Please note this is about the text of this Wikipedia article; it should not be taken to reflect on the subject of this article. Do not restore or edit the blanked content on this page until the issue is resolved by an administrator, copyright clerk or OTRS agent.
If you have just labeled this page as a potential copyright issue, please follow the instructions for filing at the bottom of the box.
The previous content of this page or section has been identified as posing a potential copyright issue, as a copy or modification of the text from the source(s) below, and is now listed on Wikipedia:Copyright problems (listing): https://web.archive.org/web/20140803100738/http://www.norta.com/About-the-RTA.aspx (Duplication Detector report)   Unless the copyright status of the text on this page is clarified, the problematic text or the entire page may be deleted one week after the time of its listing. Temporarily, the original posting is still accessible for viewing in the page history.
Can you help resolve this issue?  If you hold the copyright to this text, you can license it in a manner that allows its use on Wikipedia. Click "Show" to see how. You must permit the use of your material under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). Explain your intent to license the content on this article's discussion page To confirm your permission, you can either display a notice to this effect at the site of original publication or send an e-mail from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-en at wikimedia dot org or a postal letter to the Wikimedia Foundation. These messages must explicitly permit use under CC-BY-SA and the GFDL. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. Note that articles on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view and must be verifiable in published third-party sources; consider whether, copyright issues aside, your text is appropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia.  To demonstrate that this text is in the public domain, or is already under a license suitable for Wikipedia, click "Show". Explain this on this article's discussion page, with reference to evidence. Wikipedia:Public domain and Wikipedia:Compatibly licensed may assist in determining the status.  Otherwise, you may write a new article without copyright-infringing material. Click "Show" to read where and how. Your rewrite should be placed on this page, where it will be available for an administrator or clerk to review it at the end of the listing period. Follow this link to create the temporary subpage. Simply modifying copyrighted text is not sufficient to avoid copyright infringement—if the original copyright violation cannot be cleanly removed or the article reverted to a prior version, it is best to write the article from scratch. (See Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing.) For license compliance, any content used from the original article must be properly attributed; if you use content from the original, please leave a note at the top of your rewrite saying as much. You may duplicate non-infringing text that you had contributed yourself. It is always a good idea, if rewriting, to identify the point where the copyrighted content was imported to Wikipedia and to check to make sure that the contributor did not add content imported from other sources. When closing investigations, clerks and administrators may find other copyright problems than the one identified. If this material is in the proposed rewrite and cannot be easily removed, the rewrite may not be usable. State that you have created a rewrite on this article's discussion page.
About importing text to Wikipedia Posting copyrighted material without the express permission of the copyright holder is unlawful and against Wikipedia policy. If you have express permission, this must be verified either by explicit release at the source or by e-mail or letter to the Wikimedia Foundation. See Wikipedia:Declaration of consent for all enquiries. Policy requires that we block those who repeatedly post copyrighted material without express permission.	Instructions for filing If you have tagged the article for investigation, please complete the following steps: Add the following to the bottom of Wikipedia:Copyright_problems/2015 August 17 * {{subst:article-cv|:New Orleans Regional Transit Authority}} from https://web.archive.org/web/20140803100738/http://www.norta.com/About-the-RTA.aspx. ~~~~ Place this notice on the talk page of the contributor of the copyrighted material: {{subst:Nothanks-web|pg=New Orleans Regional Transit Authority|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140803100738/http://www.norta.com/About-the-RTA.aspx}} ~~~~ To blank a section instead of an entire article, add the template to the beginning of the section and </div> at the end of the portion you intend to blank.

RTA Governance

The body in charge of making major decisions for the RTA is the Board of Commissioners. The board consists of appointees by the Mayor of New Orleans and of some appointees by the President of Jefferson Parish. The RTA Board has the overall authority for transit in New Orleans including setting fares, overseeing service and operations, developing operating budgets, approving each year's annual transportation development plan, and deciding upon capital purchases and expansions. Under contract to the RTA Board of Commissioners, a company called Transdev Services manages all day-to-day aspects of the transit agency on behalf of the RTA Board. Transdev handles operations and service, safety issues, vehicle maintenance, customer care, route design and scheduling, human resources, administration, ridership growth, capital planning, grant administration, communications, purchasing, and other agency functions. Transdev is under contract to and reports to the RTA Board of Commissioners. The company operates public transportation for some 5,000 transit authorities around the world.

See also

• Streetcars in New Orleans
• List of light-rail transit systems

External links

• New Orleans Regional Transit Authority
• Bus Schedules & Maps
• Ride New Orleans, a not-for-profit transportation policy and research organization.