Ride did not let the opportunity go to waste. The plan laid out a wholesale redesign of the bus network as one potential option. Prioritizing neighborhoods with the greatest need for transitĪfter several years of making the case for big, structural changes to address these issues, Ride helped persuade the RTA to conduct its first strategic mobility plan in 2017. As a result, regional transit is inefficient and balkanized, with bus lines that often stop at parish borders. While the agency was originally intended to serve greater New Orleans, many of the “white flight” parishes surrounding the city opted out of the system. Historically, the RTA has also been unable to deliver regional service. “We basically went through this five-year period of just, ‘Hey, streetcars!’ while bus service really atrophied,” said Posorske. In the aftermath, the city chased streetcar grants from the Obama administration instead of addressing problems caused by plummeting population and resources. The RTA struggled to adapt to population decline and changing ridership patterns in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “That’s really important – it’s our largest job center – but it’s not even doing a great job at that.” “The system is designed at this point only to get you basically downtown,” said Posorske. The average New Orleanian without a car can only reach 12 percent of the region’s jobs in 30 minutes or less.
After following a post-Katrina strategy that focused on streetcar routes primarily used by white residents and tourists, New Links prioritizes the transit routes that vastly more New Orleans residents rely on for transportation.Ĭurrently, RTA service is infrequent, unreliable, and fragmented. If implemented, the network redesign would signal a momentous shift for the RTA. Under New Links, those measures of transit access would rise to 38% and 60%, respectively.
The group’s sustained involvement contributed to a final proposal that executive director Alex Posorske calls “an equity redistributionist’s dream.”Ĭurrently, only 19% of residents and 35% of the jobs in New Orleans are within a half-mile of transit routes that come every 20 minutes or better. Local transit advocates Ride New Orleans played a major role throughout the multi-year process, pushing for a redesign with bold changes rather than superficial tweaks. “New Links,” which was led by the New Orleans Regional Commission in conjunction with RTA and Jefferson Transit, recommends major changes to more than 40 routes. In March, the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) board voted to approve “ New Links,” a plan to redesign the transit network in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish, which borders the city to the south. Note: Holidays are not necessarily observed and service may not be different from the usual for the day.A bus network redesign proposed for New Orleans promises to greatly expand transit access to jobs, reallocating service to neighborhoods where residents rely on transit the most. Select in Stop Times for more specific holiday information.
On the holidays above, trips start at 5:40am with the last trip at 12:20am and most often run about every 22 minutes. On the holidays above, trips start at 6:00am with the last trip at 12:25am and most often run every 30 minutes. Service is offered on the following holidays, Regular service that falls on a holiday is never completely dropped for dates within the current data publication.
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