A Desire Named Streetcar What the oldest operating transit system in the U.S. can teach us

A Desire Named Streetcar
What the oldest operating transit system in the U.S. can teach us about planning for tomorrow.

By:Wayne Curtis

This past January, the Federal Transit Administration signed an agreement with the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority for $45 million in federal economic stimulus funds to build a new, 1.5-mile streetcar line. It would link Canal Street with the Union Passenger Terminal, a 1954 structure that’s now home to the Amtrak and Greyhound stations.

Skeptical New Orleanians wondered why. Of course, connecting to a regional transportation center was a sensible thing. But the line passed block after block of bleak, asphalt-savanna surface parking that flanks partially filled office towers. Why not route the new streetcar through communities that already had a denser residential population?

The answer came pretty quickly. Routing the streetcar through an underused part of the city, it turned out, was like adding water to sea monkeys. The blocks came to life almost immediately.

The Domain Companies, a developer specializing in mixed-use developments with projects in New York and Louisiana, announced that four of those empty blocks would soon give rise to some 450 new apartments and 125,000 square feet of retail and restaurants. Other projects also quickly took root in the area: An auto dealership would be converted into a much-needed downtown supermarket, and the 1,193-room Hyatt Regency New Orleans, which sits just north of the new streetcar line and has been empty since Hurricane Katrina, started getting a $243 million overhaul. The area even got a new name: the South Market District.

-snip

http://www.architectmagazine.com/planning/a-desire-named-streetcar.aspx

FYI. :hi:

So can we please build more???

:evilgrin:

were built on rail transit in the 19th century.

The book chronicles how oil robber barons bought up the streetcar systems, destroyed them and then went after the electric car (Thomas Edison was working on development of the electric car and had his factory burned down mysteriously).

They made much more getting this nation dependent on cars & oil.

:mad:

Good book if your interested in this history.

Life can be so much better without having to depend on getting through bumper to bumper traffic and then finding a parking space.