Cemeteries Fog
NORTA2017 at Canal Street and City Park Avenue, preparing to turn right. (Edward Branley photo)
Cemeteries Fog
It’s a beautiful morning now (0938CST), but around 0715, fog blanketed Mid-City New Orleans. Cemeteries fog is at once beautiful and dangerous. Misty, foggy cemeteries are wonderful for writers and poets. That same fog is awful for drivers!
NORTA Cemeteries Terminal
NORTA2017 (above) waits to turn right onto City Park Avenue. This is the new, “extended” route of the line. Prior to August, streetcars stopped where 2017 is now. NORTA completed road construction on the new Cemeteries Terminal two weeks ago. The Canal Street line still turns off on the Carrollton spur, though. NORTA and its contractors continue work on the streetcar portion of the project. It looks like they’re still working on the electronics and switching. Cemeteries fog takes a technical operation into the ethereal plane.
Terminal Testing
NORTA2021 at the New Cemeteries Terminal (Edward Branley photo)
Almost daily, now, a streetcar travels down to the new terminal. The contractors test various aspects of terminal operations. Yesterday (20-December), NORTA2024 had the duty. The terminal has two streetcar tracks. The streetcars turn from City Park Avenue, onto Canal Boulevard, then stop on one of those two tracks. The inbound trip begins there. The terminal tracks merge into a single inbound track. The streetcar turns right onto City Park, then left onto Canal.
Riders disembark when the streetcar pulls into the terminal. They then walk up the neutral ground, to the two bus lanes, if they want to transfer to a NORTA or Jefferson Transit bus. The safety improvements here are excellent.
Return to Regular Operations
I’m not sure exactly when the streetcars will resume regular operations on Canal Street. The re-opening of auto traffic was the “big story” for the media. Once the intersection’s closure ended, the terminal went out of sight, out of mind. The “Cemeteries Shuttle” continues to connect riders from the foot of Canal to Carrollton and Canal.
New Orleans: The Canal Streetcar Line
by Edward J. Branley
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.
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