A Streetcar Named ‘Desirable’ Returns to Service

All photos: New Orleans RTA

New Orleanian Tennessee Williams made A Streetcar Named Desire famous in his 1947 play by that name. It ran in the French Quarter but, despite its last-minute renown from Williams’s play, it was discontinued on May 30, 1948, after only 28½ years of service. A new line running near the old Desire route, on Rampart Street (the boundary of the French Quarter away from the Mississippi River) came and went more recently. Now, in an under-reported event, it’s back, with non-historic cars designed in a quasi-historic style by Elmer Von Dullen, whose career at the agency and its predecessor spanned 49 years. The cars bear a red livery with yellow doors and trim. The entire line is 1.6 miles long, and cars run every 20 minutes on a full-service schedule, but not 24 hours a day.

Officially, the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) calls it Route 46, the Rampart-Loyola Streetcar Line. It runs from the city’s Union Passenger Terminal, which serves Amtrak trains and Greyhound buses, on Loyola Avenue to Canal Street, one block over Canal to Rampart Street along the French Quarter boundary with the Tremé neighborhood, and onto its continuation, St. Claude Avenue, to the end of the line at Elysian Fields Avenue. The segment along Loyola Avenue opened Jan. 28, 2013. The rest of the line opened on Oct. 2, 2016.

Three years later, on Oct. 12, 2019, the line came to an abrupt halt, as due to a building collapse at Canal and North Rampart Streets, at a construction site for a new hotel. Three construction workers were killed, and the entire portion of the line on Rampart Street and St. Claude Avenue was taken out of service. Cars continued to run on Loyola Avenue through different routings on Canal Street or the Riverfront Line, which runs along the River in the French Quarter.

Now, without fanfare, and with little publicity, the line is back. It returned to service on May 19, as part of RTA’s summer schedule changes. In announcing those changes, the agency said, “While fixed-route bus service will have slight timetable adjustments, rail service will include the return on the 46-Rampart-Loyola Streetcar line, which has been offline since the Hard Rock Hotel collapse in October 2019. Several delays prevented the line from returning to service due a range of issues that included work by the RTA, the City of New Orleans, the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans and Entergy [the electric utility], as well as additional disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Ida. After a few delays with competing construction projects and Mardi Gras, crews and contractors in February began rebuilding this modern transportation infrastructure, which includes the overhead catenary power lines and supporting poles. The construction phase was followed by six weeks of training and testing.”

Axios New Orleans referred to it as the “Rampart Rambler” in its brief coverage of the line’s return in a May 16 story. Axios reported that service had been suspended in the wake of the building collapse: “The intersection [of Canal and Rampart] reopened two years later, followed by the full return of the Canal streetcar line. But the Rampart streetcar line remained shuttered as the RTA faced delay after delay thanks to COVID-19 supply chain issues, other city construction projects and Hurricane Ida.”

Local transit and environmental advocate Alan S. Drake is one New Orleanian who has been watching the progress of the line’s return to service. He plans to move to a location near the end of the line, as neighborhood infrastructure is being upgraded. As far as he is concerned, whatever name the RTA might give the line, the streetcar is named “Desirable” to him, and to many other New Orleanians.