The St. Charles Streetcar Line is a historic

streetcar line A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport are ...

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

New Orleans Regional Transit Authority The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA or NORTA) is a public transportation agency based in New Orleans. The agency was established by the Louisiana State Legislature in 1979, and has operated bus and historic streetcar service througho ...

(RTA). Officially the St. Charles Streetcar line is designated as Route 12, and it runs along its namesake,

St. Charles Avenue St. Charles Avenue (french: avenue Saint-Charles) is a thoroughfare in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. and the route of the St. Charles Streetcar Line. It is also famous for the dozens of mansions that adorn the tree-lined boulevard for much of the ...

. It is the busiest route in the RTA system as it is heavily used by local commuters and tourists. On most RTA maps and publications, it is denoted in green, which is also the color of the streetcars on this line. The St. Charles Streetcar Line is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

and is one of only two street railways

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

s, along with the

San Francisco cable car system The San Francisco cable car system is the world's last manually operated cable car system and an icon of the city of San Francisco. The system forms part of the intermodal urban transport network operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway ...

Route

The St. Charles line starts uptown, at South Carrollton Avenue and South Claiborne Avenue. It runs on South Carrollton Avenue through the Carrollton neighborhood towards the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

, then near the river

levee A levee (), dike (American English), dyke (Commonwealth English), embankment, floodbank, or stop bank is a structure that is usually earthen and that often runs parallel to the course of a river in its floodplain or along low-lying coastlin ...

turns on to St. Charles Avenue. It proceeds past entrances to Audubon Park, Tulane University and

Loyola University New Orleans Loyola University New Orleans is a private Jesuit university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Originally established as Loyola College in 1904, the institution was chartered as a university in 1912. It bears the name of the Jesuit founder, Saint Igna ...

, continues through

Uptown New Orleans Uptown is a section of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, on the east bank of the Mississippi River, encompassing a number of neighborhoods (including the similarly-named and smaller Uptown area) between the French Quarter and the Jeffers ...

including the Garden District, and ends at Canal Street in the

New Orleans Central Business District The Central Business District (CBD) is a neighborhood of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. A subdistrict of the French Quarter/CBD area, its boundaries, as defined by the City Planning Commission, are Iberville, Decatur and Ca ...

at the edge of the

French Quarter The French Quarter, also known as the , is the oldest neighborhood in the city of New Orleans. After New Orleans (french: La Nouvelle-Orléans) was founded in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, the city developed around the ("Old S ...

, a distance of . With the exception of Carondelet Street and the downtown portion of St. Charles where the line runs in the curbside lane, most of the line runs in the neutral ground (the median strip) with greenery between the tracks.

History

Planning for the line began in 1831, and work began as the

New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad The New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad (originally Rail Road) was one of six short-line rail systems built to connect the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, with surrounding neighborhoods, in this case, four-and-a-half miles to the resort village of ...

in February 1833, the second railway in Greater New Orleans after the

Pontchartrain Railroad Pontchartrain Rail-Road was the first railway in New Orleans, Louisiana. Chartered in 1830, the railroad began carrying people and goods between the Mississippi River front and Lake Pontchartrain on 23 April 1831. It closed more than 100 years late ...

. Passenger and freight services by

steam locomotives A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the Tractive force#Rail vehicles, force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, Fuel oil, oil or, rar ...

began on September 26, 1835, originally without a dedicated right-of-way (it ran on public streets), although one was eventually established in the ''neutral ground'' (the

median In statistics and probability theory, the median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as "the middle" value. The basic fea ...

). Service began as a suburban railroad, since Carrollton was at that time a separate city, while areas along the route were still mostly undeveloped. Two locomotives ''New Orleans'' and ''Carrollton'' were supplied from England by B. Hick and Sons. As the area along the line became more urbanized, objections to the soot and noise produced by the locomotives increased, and transport was switched to cars that were powered by horses and mules. For decades in the late 19th century, desire for a mode of transit more swift and powerful than horses but without the disruptive effects of locomotives resulted in a number of systems being tried out. Experimental systems included overhead cable propulsion (with a cable clamp patented by

P.G.T. Beauregard Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard (May 28, 1818 - February 20, 1893) was a Confederate general officer of Louisiana Creole descent who started the American Civil War by leading the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Today, he is commonly ...

in 1869 later being adapted for the

), and several innovative designs by Dr.

Emile Lamm Emile Lamm (24 November 1834 – 12 July 1873, in New Orleans) was a French-born American inventor and dentist. Lamm was born in Aÿ, France, but moved to Louisiana in 1848 at the age of 14. He patented various improvements in techniques of go ...

, including

ammonia engine Ammonia is an inorganic compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . A stable binary hydride, and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinct pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogenous w ...

s, a "Chloride of Calcium Engine", and most successfully Lamm Fireless Engine which not only propelled pairs of cars along the line in the 1880s but was adopted by the street railways of Paris. While the city's first experiments with electric-powered cars were made in 1884 (in conjunction with the

World Cotton Centennial The World Cotton Centennial (also known as the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition) was a World's Fair held in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States in 1884. At a time when nearly one third of all cotton produced in the United St ...

World's Fair), electric streetcars were not considered sufficiently developed for widespread use until the following decade, and the line was electrified February 1, 1893. At the same time, it was extended from the corner of St. Charles and Carrollton Avenues out Carrollton to a new car barn at Willow Street. 426 on StCharles

In 1900, the St. Charles and Tulane streetcar lines were extended on Carrollton Avenue and connected together, resulting in a two-way belt line. Cars signed St. Charles left Canal Street on Baronne Street to Howard Avenue to St. Charles Avenue, thence all the way to Carrollton and out that avenue, returning to the central business district on Tulane Avenue. Streetcars leaving Canal Street on Tulane Avenue were signed Tulane, operating out to Carrollton Avenue, then turning riverward to St. Charles Avenue, passing Lee Circle to Howard Avenue, and finally down Baronne (later Carondelet) to Canal Street. In 1922 the New Orleans & Carrollton Rail Road was merged into

New Orleans Public Service Incorporated Entergy New Orleans, formerly New Orleans Public Service Incorporated (NOPSI), is an electric and natural gas utility and former mass transit provider that was based in New Orleans, Louisiana. The various streetcar lines of New Orleans were consoli ...

(NOPSI), which consolidated the city's various streetcar lines and electrical production. Historic St

In 1950, plans were made to fill in the New Basin Canal, which the Belt Lines crossed on a bridge on Carrollton Avenue. The right of way was to be used for the

Pontchartrain Expressway The Pontchartrain Expressway is a parallel six-lane section of Interstate 10 (I-10) and U.S. Route 90 Business (US 90 Bus.) in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, with a brief stand-alone section in between junctions with these highwa ...

, and Carrollton Avenue traffic was to use an underpass. Rather than rebuild tracks in the underpass, the Tulane and St. Charles lines were separated, and Tulane Avenue was converted to a trolley coach line. During construction, the St. Charles line continued to operate (in both directions) all the way on Carrollton Avenue from St. Charles Avenue to the underpass construction site at Dixon Street. Once the underpass was completed, the St. Charles streetcar line was cut back to Claiborne Avenue, as it operates at present, and the Tulane trolley coach line took over the part of Carrollton Avenue between Tulane Avenue and Claiborne. StCharlesCarstopPoleAudubon

In 1972 automatic fareboxes were introduced, and the job of a separate conductor was eliminated from the streetcars. The line still has one of the Ford, Bacon & Davis 1894 vintage cars in running condition. Although it is not used for passenger service, it stays busy with work operations such as track sanding. The rest of the line's cars date from 1923–24. In 1973, preservationists successfully listed the St. Charles line on the

. But it is not possible to provide the historic cars with wheelchair access doors and lifts in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). For this reason, it has been the only service in the system not to have wheelchair access.

In 1983, the RTA was created to oversee public transportation in New Orleans. It assumed the operations of city bus lines and the St. Charles line from NOPSI, which has since folded into

Entergy Entergy Corporation is a Fortune 500 integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations in the Deep South of the United States. Entergy is headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana, and gene ...

. In 2005, service along the route was suspended due to damage from

Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina was a destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 fatalities and $125 billion in damage in late August 2005, especially in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time the cos ...

and the floods from levee breaches. The small section from Canal Street to Lee Circle was the first part restored. The section continuing up to Napoleon Avenue was re-opened for service on November 11, 2007, and on December 23, 2007, was extended up to Carrollton Avenue, near the line's original terminus in 1833. The restoration of the line on the remaining section along Carrollton Avenue to Claiborne Avenue took place on June 22, 2008. The St. Charles line was listed by the National Park Service as a

in 2014. This recognizes it as a place that possesses "exceptional value and quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States," quoting the announcement from the Department of the Interior. It joins the

as one of only two moving streetcar National Historic Landmarks. (There are other moving landmarks, such as ships and trains.) Following a lawsuit over access for wheelchair and other limited mobility patrons, RTA entered into a consent decree in 2017, agreeing to make six stops (each end, as well as Napoleon, Louisiana, Jackson, and a then-undetermined stop near Riverbend) ADA compliant. At least one wheelchair lift-equipped car was to be added to the line, but the historic Perley Thomas streetcars were not to be modified. In 2020, to comply with the 2017 consent decree, RTA renovated three streetcars (and later a fourth) that had originally been built with wheelchair accessible features for Riverfront service, bringing the St. Charles streetcar line into compliance with the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This included repainting these cars from Riverfront red to the iconic St. Charles line green. The cars carry a wheelchair icon on their ends and sides. RTA also rebuilt car stops at six major intersections to allow wheelchair access. Wheelchair accessible service on the St. Charles line began on December 1, 2020.

Operation

The St. Charles Streetcar line operates 24 hours a day, with frequent service most of the day (7 a.m. to 10 p.m.), with cars coming every nine minutes. Cars operate every 18 minutes early morning (before 7 a.m.) and late night (10 p.m. to midnight), with 36 minute intervals in the night owl period (midnight to 6 a.m.). The principal equipment of the line consists of 35 streetcars built in 1923–24 by the Perley Thomas Car Co. They have been rebuilt several times during their long service life.

List of streetcar stops

''From Canal Street to Uptown''

References

External links

*
St. Charles Streetcar line schedule
* {{Authority control Passenger rail transportation in Louisiana Transportation in New Orleans Light rail in Louisiana Heritage streetcar systems