In the 1960s, Canal Street buses changed downtown.
Canal Street buses
From: 1965: NOPSI photo of a GM GMC TDH5303 bus. It’s running on the Canal-Lakeshore line, outbound, passing through the 1000 block of Canal Street. This photo dates to about a year after the conversion of Canal to bus service. The vintage-1923 arch roof streetcars ceased operation on Canal in May of 1964.
Cemeteries, Lake Vista, Lakeshore
So much can be said about the buses on Canal, and there are a few other items to be unpacked on this image. Let’s focus on the three Canal bus lines, post-streetcar. I rode those lines in both directions for the five years I attended Brother Martin High School in Gentilly. While my dad, who worked at the University of New Orleans, drove me to school in the morning, I rode public transit home. NOPSI provided two basic routes west from Gentilly. The Broad Street line ran from out in Da East, then Gentilly Blvd. The line turned onto Broad Street, just after passing Dillard University, continuing all the way to Lowerline, uptown. The other option using Gentilly Blvd. was the Carrollton line. Both of these lines crossed Canal. So, we would hop off and catch one of the three Canal lines to City Park Avenue. We caught the Veterans bus from there.
Lakeview
Then there was the second route, through Lakeview. We took the Cartier line from Mirabeau and Elysian Fields to Spanish Fort. The Cartier line started at Franklin and Mirabeau. It was, for all intents and purposes, a school bus route, passing by several elementary schools, F. W. Gregory Junior High, and John F. Kennedy Senior High. So at Spanish Fort, we transferred to the Canal (Lake Vista via Canal Blvd.) That line began its inbound run there. We’d ride Lake Vista to Toussaint and Canal Blvd. While the bus turned inbound on Canal Blvd., we got off and transferred to the line from this photo, Canal (Lakeshore via Pontchartrain Blvd.)
The Canal Lakeshore bus ran outbound on West End, turned right on Toussaint, then left on Canal Blvd. It terminated at the lake. For its outbound run, the line returned to Toussaint and went down Pontchartrain Blvd. So, we caught the inbound Lakeshore and rode it to Veterans, where we would pick up the Veterans.
Suburban transition
Cor Jesu and St. Aloysius High Schools didn’t have a lot of boys from Metairie attending the schools. As suburban expansion grew, the combined Brother Martin High appealed to a number of Crusader and Kingsmen families who moved out to Metairie. We kids from #themetrys were still a minority of the student body, back in the 70s. As the transition grew (now, most Crusaders live in Metairie and Kenner), the school offered school bus service, so families didn’t have to rely on less-reliable public buses.
To continued…
We’ll have more to say about this image in a couple of other posts. Thanks to Aaron Handy, III, for sharing this image to one of the bus fan groups on Facebook and triggering my memories!
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