The Transportation Committee of the New Orleans City Council met on April 2, 2026, to hear updates on Amtrak's Mardi Gras service, the Safe Streets for All Safety Action Plan, the St. Claude Avenue corridor safety study, and reports from the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) and Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. The committee voted unanimously to adopt Resolution R26137, endorsing the city's safety action plan with a goal of eliminating traffic fatalities by 2041.
Good morning everyone. I want to thank everyone for coming on time, and um we have at least two council members here today, myself and council member Harris. Um Councilmember King has another event, but he wishes to be present for number four. So if you're here for number four, I'm gonna ask for your patience as we um are going to move that agenda item. I am going to move another agenda item, but I appreciate everyone's patience. We meet on a quarterly basis because we have boards, and I'm familiar with what the boards are doing, the RTA board, the airport board, so a quarterly meeting is an opportunity for us to share information with the public relative to important issues. So I'm going to move um, Councilmember Harris, if you don't move to, if you don't mind to item number five. We don't have a quote and update on the Amtrak Marty Bus service, which is a twice daily passenger train route connecting New Orleans and will be o from Todd Stennis, the director of Amtrak governmental affairs, um, who is based here in New Orleans. Councilmember, while we uh wait for Mr. Stennis to come up, can we do roll call real quick for the record, please? Councilmember Green. President. Councilmember Willard, Councilmember Harris, Councilmember King, Councilmember Hughes, we have two members meeting on the point. Okay. And as I mentioned, Councilman King should be arriving at eleven fifteen at that time. We'll vote on the minutes and also other actions. Oh, okay. My name is Todd Stennis. I'm Amtrak's director of government affairs here in New Orleans, Louisiana. Uh I cover a territory throughout the Southeast from Texas to North Carolina. Um and I have the pleasure of giving you a quick update on the Mardi Gras service. Uh, Councilman Green uh has uh asked me to come give everyone an update on where we are with Amtrak's latest service here in New Orleans, and I'm here to give that to you now. So let me give you a little background and uh something that's really important to us. This is what I like to start with. Um this is our emergency notification signs. These are signs at every railroad crossing throughout the country. Um this when it comes to railroads and railroad crossings, this is more important than nine one one. If you've ever everybody in this room crosses a railroad track on a pretty regular basis, I would assume. And when you cross the railroad track, um this sign is at every railroad crossing, whether it's on crossing signals or on the crossbucks, whatever the crossing protections may be uh for the crossing. The good news is for our route on the Mardi Gras service, going on the city of New Orleans, all of the crossings have gates and lights on them. Some of the other routes out of the city of New Orleans where the Sunset Limited and the City of New Orleans operate, and maybe even the Crescent. Actually, I think the crescent's covered, but some of those crossings are not fully protected with gates and lights, so this is something always to look out for. You ever see a stall vehicle on a railroad crossing or a situation around a railroad crossing, this number is more important because when you dial this phone number, it goes immediately to a contact with that railroad and that you give them that crossing identification number, and as long as it's within a reasonable amount of time, they can stop all rail traffic. So that's something a lot of people don't know about, and we like to make sure that the ENS signs are a something that everybody should be aware of. Moving right along. Amtrak service has been in the city of New Orleans since 1971. Today, uh in the fiscal year 2025, we carry 34 and a half million riders. We operate over 280 trains per day, and we've got 40 routes covering over a 21,000 mile network. We serve all of the lower 46 states. The only two that we do not serve are Wyoming and South Dakota. Just a quick background on Amtrak, Amtrak took over all of the private carrier service in 1971, with the exception of a couple of carriers that continue to operate service into the late 70s and early 1980s, but today Amtrak covers all of the United States inner city passenger rail service. So Amtrak is broken into three categories as far as our operating network. We have the Northeast Carter that Amtrak owns the bulk of, and then we have our national network, which is made up of the long distance network, which consists of 15 routes, and then the short distance network, which is the state supported network, which we're going to get into a great deal here in just a few moments. This gives you a quick overview of what Amtrak's network looks like. The red up in the northeast is of course the Northeast Carter. The gold routes are the long distance routes, and the blue routes are the state supported routes. And in many instances, the blue routes overlap the long distance routes because we have sections of the territory where there is both long distance and state supported service, such as in California, in the Midwest, in Virginia, and in the Pacific Northwest, even some areas in the Northeast as well. So specifically in Louisiana, we have uh five daily routes. We've got nine trains a day in and out of the city of New Orleans, and starting in August of this this past year, that increased to nine from five. Uh, and that is the most number of daily Amtrak trains that have come in and out of the city of New Orleans since Amtrak's inception in 1971.