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.

Obviously, with the Mardi Gras service being the newest.

We have 216,000 passengers in the state of Louisiana in FY25, and of that 216,000, 188,000 of those are coming in and out of the city of New Orleans.

That's that's a number just to hang your hat on here for just a minute.

When we talk about Mardi Gras, you're gonna see the changes there that we are looking at.

We've got 262 employees here in the city of New Orleans.

We have a large mechanical facility for not only turnaround service, but we do light overhauls as well here at the facility at New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal.

On August 18th of 2025, we started the new Mardi Gras service.

So let's talk about that.

The Mardi Gras service is a twice-daily Amtrak service supported by the states of Louisiana DOTD, the Mississippi DOT, and the City of Mobile that operates two round trips a day between New Orleans and Mobile with stops in Bay St.

Louis, Gulfport Biloxi, and Pascagoula ending up in Mobile.

We've got two trains in the morning, one originating in Mobile, one originating in New Orleans, and then the same thing happens late in the day.

So this is what the schedule looks like for those two daily round trips.

Um we've got again service beginning in the morning on each end, and then service in the afternoon beginning on each end.

The service has been a great success so far, and we're gonna get into those details here next.

So when we get into looking at the Mardi Gras service and what it actually does, not only does it service the local market between New Orleans and Mobile, but it also feeds into the long distance network.

Our uh City of New Orleans service operating from Chicago to New Orleans is a direct connection to the sit to the Mardi Gras service, so you can come in on Mardi Gras, our city of New Orleans and transfer between those trains.

You can transfer to the other trains, but it does require an overnight stay because the schedules don't quite line up.

We offer coach and business class service.

Each train set has approximately 137 seats on board.

So we've got two coaches and then we've got a split club cafe that has business class in it as well.

Since we've launched the service, as of the end of March, we have carried 92,000 passengers.

To put that in perspective, we projected in year one that it would be between 76,000 and 77,000.

And so we're talking from August of last year, August 18th of 2025 to the end of March, we've carried 92,000.

We have clearly surpassed that expectation for year one, and those numbers continue to grow.

So here's what it looks down like as far as the breakdown of service between the four trains that are operating every day.

Obviously, trains 23 and 26 have the bulk of the ridership, but that does not diminish what trains 24 and 25 are doing.

24 is the train that leaves New Orleans in the morning going to Mobile, 25 comes out of Mobile in the afternoon.

So the morning train out of Mobile and the evening train out of New Orleans are carrying the most passengers.

But again, that does not take away from the other service as well.

Our average load factors are exceptionally high.

When you look at the daily ridership, as I mentioned earlier, we've got 137 seats on each train set.

We're averaging 412 people per day.

That's that is a significant number there when you look at where we stand on our ridership.

The peak load factors are ranging anywhere from just shy of 70% to 77%, depending on whether we're talking business class or we're talking coach.

Biloxi, Mississippi is the busiest station after you look at the two endpoints of New Orleans and Mobile as well.

So then we take a look at what's the customer satisfaction look like on this service.

It is also very high.

When we just look at a snapshot of what we're getting as far as the feedback from the customer index scores, they are very high from everywhere from on time performance to initial terminal delay to end point arrival.

And that's also a compliment to the host railroads and Norfolk Southern and CSX for getting the train over the road in a timely manner and keeping the train on schedule.

Doesn't mean that there's not days that things don't happen, but for the most part, we're having a very successful rate on the on-time performance.

So when we look at where are people riding as far as what days of the week.

Traditionally, we are seeing more Friday, Saturday, and Sunday is the higher load factors as opposed to Monday through Thursday.

But again, when you look at Monday through Thursday, you're still tapping around 60% on the load factors, Saturday being the busiest days.

The average coach fare is just shy of $30, and the average business class fare is just shy of $70.

When we get into the specific ridership, New Orleans is obviously taking the cake on the highest ridership numbers.

When we look at ons and offs, Mobile obviously is following right behind being the two anchor cities, that is a pretty common thing to see.

And as I mentioned earlier, Biloxi over on the Mississippi Gulf Coast has the highest ridership across the Gulf Coast.

But you look at those those variations, Pascagoulas still averaging just shy of 6,000 riders so far through the year.

Biloxi is just over 14,000.

So it's a it's a good variation of cities across the Gulf Coast and the ridership that they're seeing as well.

55% of your ridership is going to and from the endpoints.

So that speaks well as far as the ridership goes, as far as the where we're coming from from a standpoint of boardings and lighting.

So you've got 55% of the ridership that's going all the way full route from one end to the other.

So as I mentioned earlier, the customer service index is very high for the Mardi Gras service.

I mean, we're looking at blue sky scores of 96%.

That is a one of the highest in the country in the entire Amtrak network.

The publicity that we are seeing on the Mardi Grass service, it is there's not too many days that go by that you don't see a published story somewhere in the world that is touting the new Mardi Grass service that Amtrak has, and in so doing, it is promoting the city of New Orleans, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and the City of Mobile as well as a destination place and a place that not only when you come to New Orleans, there's other places that you can go in the surrounding area via Amtrak.

So now that the service is up and running, one of the other commitments that was made were capital infrastructure projects that were funded through the Chrissy program.

Those projects are in design right now.

They're varying as far as at what stage they're at, but they are under design.

And what you're going to see is you're going to see capital improvements on the railroad between New Orleans and Mobile that will allow for the fluidity of the railroad to improve beyond what it is today.

When these projects are complete over the course of the next 36 to 48 months, it is going to allow us to take time out of the schedule and shorten the schedule from what it is today.

You can see the specific projects in the City of New Orleans, include the bypass track around Gentilly Yard over New Orleans East, as well as some terminal connections on what we call the back belt that the Norfolk Southern owns between East City Junction and the New Orleans Terminal Junction.

So when you want to book Amtrak, there's three key ways to do so.

1800 USA Rail, the Amtrak app, and Amtrak.com.

Of course, if you have a group, we can also have you call 1800 USA one group.

And I can say from the point that we've had 92,000 riders so far, all of those avenues are being exercised and exercised well.

If you don't hear anything else I'd say today, this is the most important thing is the E and S signs.

Because crossing safety is a key issue, as we all know, there's been a couple of incidents on this route already.

Um and even though these things happen across the country every day, sometimes when it's a passenger train involved, it has a tendency to be more prevalent in the media than a freight train.

So this is the most important takeaway for today that I have to offer you.

And I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

I'm sure the answer is cost, but I shouldn't start off the question like that.

But what stops us from having rails or um warning signals at the other locations between New Orleans and Mobile since we have now this new very popular line.

Well, the as I mentioned earlier, all of the crossings in the city of New Orleans are have gates and lights.

Yes, sir.

Those are all gated and lighted.

Right.

Um there's other routes out of the city that there are different levels of crossing protection, so those certainly can be considered, and that's a conversation with the railroads and the DOT.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

How does the success of the Mardi Gras line help us relative to the considerations of New Orleans to Baton Rouge?

Which is something that is.

I I think it's I think it proves the case that the ridership is there because uh as you well know, uh, there were some that speculated what the service could potentially do because there was there were unknowns.

There's no question there were unknowns going into it.

But I think what this has proven is that the traveling public wants an alternative to the automobile.

We're talking about a market you cannot fly between unless you're gonna go to Atlanta, or you're gonna go to Houston, are you gonna go somewhere else?

And by the time you go make a trip like that, you've spent more time than it would take to drive it.

Um so when we talk about New Orleans to Baton Rouge, the Mardi Gras service is certainly a case study for why it should be done.

What are some of the things that the city the city council can do to facilitate New Orleans to Baton Rouge happening and um what are some of the challenges right now that exist?

Well, the right now the uh the Federal Railroad Administration has the Carter ID program, and LADOTD did put in for a Carter ID grant for New Orleans to Baton Rouge.

That is the first step in the process.

So there once there are they are a little bit further down the road at LADOTD with that program.

Amtrak can be more involved with it, but right now it's between LADOTD and the FRA.

I think the most important thing is for not only the councils uh between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, but for the legislative delegation to remain involved with that as well.

Be sure to ask us, you know, whatever is necessary in terms of us offering support.

That line would be very important to support certainly the New Orleans Airport, for example, and also just um travel between the two would be environmentally sound and also would help to show up the infrastructure.

And I know the infrastructure is a problem right now.

Can you talk about some of the infrastructure challenges?

Well, one of the key things I know uh on the New Orleans Baton Rouge territory is it has not had passenger service in my lifetime since the late 1960s, um, and there are some infrastructure improvements that have to take place.

I know the Bonnie Carrie Spillway Bridge uh is one of the key factors on the route, and obviously there's there's probably other things that have to be evaluated by the railroad and will be evaluated through the Carter ID process.

Uh but one thing I'll mention about the Baton Rouge service is when the time comes that that service can be implemented, we'll have the ability to have synergies between the Mardi Gras service and the Baton Rouge service because you have the equipment utilization opportunity there where we have equipment that may be, and then again it's a possibility, it's not a guarantee, but where you have equipment that's laying over in New Orleans for the day or the evening, you have an opportunity for that equipment to go on through to Baton Rouge.

So those are things that would certainly be looked at uh that we could uh build upon, and we will evaluate that accordingly as it as it comes around.

Thank you.

Before I turn to council members, if they have any questions, I do want to say I want you to impart to the Southern Rail Commission our appreciation that they've chosen New Orleans for the June 5th meeting and that we're gonna be great hosts, council members will be invited to come.

But um, you certainly know that we'll be talking New Orleans to Baton Rouge in some way or the other at that meeting.

But thank you for choosing New Orleans.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Councilmember Thank you, Chairman Green.

I was just curious to know if you guys have any data on the purpose of the rail passengers going from New Orleans to I guess all the way to Mobile.

Is it recreation, vacation?

Is it is it for work?

Do you have any data on that?

I don't have any specific data, but I can tell you everything that you just mentioned uh is key to that.

Um I can tell you that I am on the train frequently, and you see a cross section of passengers from students to people going to different jobs uh to people that are that are traveling for vacation.

Uh case in point, uh I was on just a few weeks ago, and there was a passenger that was that boarded in Pascagoula, was coming to New Orleans to take a trip to Europe, rode the train from Pascagoula to New Orleans, Ubered over to MSY and flew out and then was doing the same thing on the return.

So that that just gives you uh a small example of of what different people are using it for.

Okay.

Thank you.

It is a cross-section of of use.

Any do you do you know if if there's one particular use that's the most dominant?

I don't, but I'm happy to curiosity.

I'm happy to dig into that information and try to get that for you.

Okay, thank you.

Yes, sir.

We'd appreciate that.

Councilmember Harris.

No.

Okay, well, thank you, Mr.

Um Stennis, for that presentation.

We're glad to hear of the success of the Mardi Gras line.

Look, I don't have any comments on that issue.

So at the end of the day, your um presentation has been very helpful.

There are a lot of people who watch in addition to the people who are here, and I want them to be pumped up about the Mardi Gras line, the success of it, because part of that success is because we did a lot of work here in New Orleans to make that happen.

I want to encourage people to use it.

It's environmentally friendly to be able to use that um line, but it's also something that um connects us with places that we might not be connected to so much.

Pascagoula, Gulfport, Biloxi.

You know, it's a those are great stops along the line too.

And I know people who have gone from New Orleans just because they had never gone to Pascagoula before to go and have lunch and then come back at the end of the day.

So it's another form of our you know communications with jurisdictions nearby.

Yes, sir.

Thank you very much for your presentation.

I'll leave you.

I'll leave you on this note for for the Easter weekend.

You were asking about travel.

Uh Easter weekend this Saturday, it's uh I I know at least one of the round trips coming over to New Orleans 23 trains 23 and 26, the morning train over and evening train back.

That train's already sold out.

I had a state legislator reach out to me wanting to ride it this weekend, and I said, got a book a little bit sooner.

It's it's sold out.

And and what you you asked uh again, one of the other things that I think is critical is and I think you can go look at this pattern, Saints Game weekends, it's consistently been sold out.

So uh I don't want to leave the New Orleans Saints out of this equation because they play a key role in it.

Councilman Green, thank you very much.

Yes, appreciate your support as always.

Council member you raise your hand, you want to fill out a card.

It's in the box.

Okay, come on up.

We'll get the card.

You can just um mention your name.

Councilmember Willis um uh Willard, our um vice president brought up an interesting question.

I know of a tour group in Mobile that has created and expanded African American history tour because people come from New Orleans.

So churches are booking to go to Mobile to see the the Clotille, for example, and um other historic sites in Mobile.

So it's interesting how that has resulted because this was created.

Okay, we have a number of cars.

Let me just make sure I don't want to miss Amtrak.

Are you um the Sierra?

Ali Lestina.

All right, okay.

Good morning.

I'm Alina Stina, executive director at Bike C your local bike nonprofit.

Good to see some familiar faces.

Uh, Councilmember Willard, I have a meeting with your team on Monday, so they'll be familiar with our work.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

Uh I've had a lot of questions come to our organization.

Where when are we gonna have bike facilities in the Amtrak train?

I know they have it in other places around the country.

So I would like to see or hear if there is any timeline around that.

I I know I came to the everyone cutting and I said at the moment we don't have any baggage cars equipped with bike racks, we cannot do it.

But when we think about making money, think about more users using that.

And if that's not a possibility now considering having long-term secure bike parking for folks who are taking day trips or maybe an overnight trip to Bilexi to bike to go to Ocean Springs and come back.

So wonder if you have any insight on that.

That's a great question, and I can promise you you're not the first to ask.

Uh, but I unfortunately right now our equipment is that's down here on the Mardi Gras service is not set up to carry bikes.

Um, but I can assure you that once we are able to do that, we will make that a public announcement as soon as possible.

Okay, and if there's any way that we can gather the support and put you put you know some information for people who are making the decision, just let me know.

We'd love to work together.

Absolutely.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much for your questions and for your advocacy.

So thank you very much, Mrs.

Dennis.

Look forward to seeing you again soon.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Council member, you want to do the roll call?

I mean, I'm sorry, the approval of the minutes.

Council Vice President, may I entertain a motion to approve the minutes?

May I entertain a second?

That's been probably moved and seconded.

Members all in favor.

Any opposed, those minutes have been approved.

Thank you.

We're moving to item number three.

This is the consideration resolution number R26137 by Councilmember Green by request.

Committing to the city's safe streets for all safety action plan to reduce the number of traffic fatalities.

We have um presented by Jeannie Donovan with the Department of Health.

Jennifer Rooley with Public Works.

Members, let me make sure that you have this.

Councilmember Harris.

Yeah, this.

Okay.

On the desktop.

Got it.

Got it.

Okay.

Good morning, members of the Transportation Committee.

We're here to brief you on the city's safety action plan.

Give me a favor.

Introduce who's at the table with you.

Yes.

At the table, Jennifer Rooley, I'm with the Department of Public Works.

Jeannie Donovan, uh Department of Health and Human Services.

William Johnson, Department of Health and Human Services.

Captain Anthony Mishu, New Ontario Police Department Traffic and Safety.

Thank you.

So we're here to present on the city's safety action plan.

This has been the culmination of more than a year of hard work by lots of people.

In the audience, I wanted to acknowledge that we have the deputy mayor of EGNO as well as the deputy CAO for infrastructure, Steve Nelson.

I also wanted to acknowledge that a lot of what we are going to be sharing with you this morning is the work of Tool Design Group, the consultant who was who is uh funded to help us with this process.

And I also like to acknowledge the work and contribution of Matt Rufo and Dan Jotris who did a lot of the work during last year on this safety action plan.

Next slide.

So we're here to just we are here to discuss a problem, specifically a safety problem.

On average, 60 people die, and 373 people are seriously injured in traffic each year.

If we look at the trends over time, crashes rose, fatal crashes rose for three years, peaking at 70 in 2022 before falling to 59 in 2023.

That's the line at the bottom.

However, serious injuries continue to rise over five years, peaking at 473 93 crashes in 2023.

Next slide.

So how does New Orleans compare to other communities?

Consistently tops the list statewide for traffic fatalities and serious injuries.

As a table from the Louisiana Louisiana Highway Safety Commission shows on the left.

The 1.71 fatalities at the end of this scale on this map is per 100,000 population, and that is Louisiana.

Next slide.

So where are these crashes happening?

In developing the safety action plan, we are focusing on the most severe crashes as opposed to fender benders and crashes that result in minor or no injuries.

The red dots represent fatal crashes, while the orange dots represent serious injury crashes.

The vast majority of these crashes are on interstates, state highways, and arterial local roadways.

While motor vehicle crashes represent 96% of the total crashes, as the graph on the left shows, crashes involving vulnerable road users comprise a larger share of fatal and serious injury crashes.

This is demonstrated in the graph on the right.

Vulnerable road users include pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists.

This distribution of fatal and serious injury crashes indicates that we have a multimodal crash problem.

And the next slide, if we look at where these crashes are concentrated, 68% of fatal and serious crashes occurred on just 130 miles or 7% of the entire roadway network in Orleans Parish.

The entire roadway network is around 1700 miles.

Okay.

So Jen shared a lot of the crash data and the findings of that data analysis that went into the safety action plan.

But I also want to share that there was a lot of qualitative community engagement that also went into the plan that we're putting before you today.

There was lots of surveys, public meetings, focus groups, maps that folks could pinpoint places where they have challenges and hazardous conditions across the city.

And it the big takeaway you can see from this slide is that it seems like everyone you talk to has been affected by this.

So they know a friend, a family member, a neighbor, or they themselves have been impacted by hazardous roadway conditions and a traffic fatality or serious injury.

And I want to share that at the health department, just last month, a member of our team was hit by an illegal left turner on St.

Claude and seriously injured, broken leg, affecting her finances, her quality of life, and her ability to come to work.

And the month before that, in February, our healthy start program lost a mom on a participating mom on Chef Mentor.

I think she was only 21 years old, had twin six month old sons, and died trying to cross the street to get food for her family.

And so this really does hit close to home for us, and many members of our community are impacted.

Next slide.

So based on all of the data analysis and the feedback we got from community members, we set a really bold, attainable but ambitious goal of eliminating death and serious injury on New Orleans streets by 2041, so 15 years from now, and the interim goal of reducing deaths and serious injuries by 50% in five years, so by 2031.

And we know that this you know all of these deaths and fatalities are preventable using different strategies that we're gonna talk about in a minute.

Just a little bit of context for where we are today.

So this safety action plan is part of a five billion dollar fund that Congress set up through the infrastructure law several years ago.

So this planning grant was funded by that infrastructure fund, but more importantly, um that fund includes money for implementation.

And so the adoption of this plan by the council and the administration and the goal that we set forward positions us to apply for a large pot of funding for making these projects that are in the plan real.

And so that actually that funding opportunity opened last week, and we're planning to make an application in the next two months, and really adopting this plan as the first step toward applying for those funds and turning the plan into a reality.

So this is just a visual of kind of how we collected uh information from the community.

2500 survey and online map responses, and the priorities that were identified are really carefully detailed in the plan, but they really relate to everything you can imagine.

Sidewalk and roadway conditions, dangerous crossings and poor visibility, lack of safe facilities, street lighting.

Um, in addition to infrastructure issues, our surveys found that it's actually behaviors too that we need to change.

So it's not just the way the roadways are designed and infrastructure is built, but also risky driving, addressing risky driving, um, disregard for traffic laws, aggressive driving.

So these are things that are a part of the way that New Orleans New Orleanians are driving on the road that can be changed through uh communications campaigns, awareness campaigns, education, and just a lot of um changing the way we think about the way we drive and the way that we respect others who are on the roadway.

So, based on this survey input as well as crash and risk data, um, the priority safety network was identified.

And we're showing this in this map.

The priority safety network is where we can focus on investments on roadway safety, including infrastructure, education, and enforcement strategies to maximize safety.

This network includes 12 problem intersections, which are represented by the red dots, and of course, the red lines are our corridors that we would want to that we want to focus on.

Um please note that the controlled access routes like the interstate I 10 and I 610 are not included in the priority safety network due to the lack of connectivity with local streets.

And these are the local streets are under city control, but the interstate is under the state's control, so that is more of the responsibility of DOTD.

Still a priority, but less in this the control of the city.

The total price tag is 171.1 million dollars for 66 miles of roadways in the priority network.

This includes 92.3 million needed for safety improvements on 42 miles of state highways and 69.5 million for improvements on 24 miles of uh local streets.

These cost estimates do not include the cost of safety awareness campaigns and increased enforcement.

These are just infrastructure costs that I'm sharing with you here.

So let's be clear.

Uh we're we're under no illusion that this is gonna that eliminating traffic deaths is going to be easy.

Um it will require the right mix of strategies, as Jeannie mentioned, engineering education and enforcement.

These are uh typically referred to as the three E's of the safety stool.

Um in the next few slides, we're share some of the major recommendations from the safety action plan for improving safety on the roadways.

This starts with safe street design for improved visibility.

And examples include sufficient roadway and sidewalk lighting, adding curb extensions and other corner parking restrictions at corners, and then installing high visibility crosswalks where appropriate and improving bus stops.

Uh we also need to focus on reducing conflicts.

Um, this includes signalization improvements.

Um, you know, you should know that less than 20% of our our of our signalized intersections have pedestrian indicators.

So we're working on that.

Protected intersections, this means separating people walking from uh vehicular movements at intersections, restricting turns such as no turn on red policies, and then improving our overall design policies within public works.

We also need to focus on designing streets that encourage safe speeds.

Um a pedestrian's likelihood of surviving a crash or sustaining a serious injury with a moving vehicle traveling at 40 miles per hour is 73 percent compared to 13 percent for a vehicle moving at 20 miles per hour.

Reducing speeding will require introducing traffic calming, such as speed humps, speed cushions, and reducing speed limits, especially on major streets.

Finally, managing speeds will require strategic enforcement.

Yeah.

So um this just details some of the the recommendations of the safety action plan that relate to that culture of safety that we need to build in the city.

And so, like I mentioned, community safety awareness campaigns, safety focused trainings and events, and using demonstration projects to test out different interventions and and um get socialize those with the public.

So temporary uh crosswalks, different interventions that that are we can test through um low dollar interventions that that really get and gain feedback quickly from the public on um these chain longer term changes.

And the last part of the plan is really just to measure and be a transparent about how we're doing.

So we really need to continue to track how we're doing with implementing safety measures and infrastructure, and then how we're doing in terms of our fatal and serious injuries by mode over the over the um period of the goal.

And so just to wrap up, our next steps are ideally adopting a resolution by the city council, adopting the plan and the goal we put forward today.

We're working on an executive order with the mayor's office to similarly adopt the plan and then to move forward with our application for funding for implementation uh by May.

We have um Councilmember Harrison, Council Member Willard who wish to comment.

I just want to ask you one question.

Can you summarize for the public the resolution about passage of the resolution?

What it um asked for.

Yeah.

So the resolution just says that the safety action plan that we're putting forward today is the official plan of the city, as well as the it also includes the goal to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries on our roadways by twenty in the next 15 years.

Okay, just so the public can know.

That is work the safety action plan is a product of the Department of Public Works and the Department of Health.

Just want the public to know.

Councilmember Harris.

Thank you for this.

Um I'll start with um your slides aren't numbered, but the priority safety network, which has all the red lines on it.

Um Chapatoulis is not on this priority safety network.

List and my question is why when we know that there have been fatalities, as you point out in your previous slide.

Um, and you were just on a um uh a site visit with Matthew from my office at a location where someone was hit by a car.

We know that Chapatulus has no real traffic lights or traffic calming measures on it, despite the fact that it is currently um blowing up really as far as new businesses, um, new popular businesses.

What are we doing about making sure that Chopatulus is safe for people to cross?

Thank you for that question, Councilmember Harris.

Um the priority safety network looked at it developed a scoring system to determine how we would identify that network.

And um it was based on the frequency of severe and fatal crashes as well as risky driving, um uh the community priorities and so forth.

So the priority safety network is gonna be where we have the most serious issues, safety issues to address.

However, it is not the only safety interventions that we would be working on throughout, you know, in the future.

Um, in fact, um there are different corridors in here which will receive traffic calming um improvements that are not on the safety uh the priority safety network.

So um this is just a way for us to focus our effort on the most serious uh uh corridors that had been identified through this process, but it's certainly we intend to address corridors like uh Tropatoulis, as you mentioned, uh, because we're not gonna ignore safety issues.

We will find a way to address those.

So this is not um we're not limited to actions only on the safety network.

This is just where we will be prioritizing a very coordinated response to drive down the crashes.

If we can be successful on this priority safety network, then we will have a chance of achieving our goal.

But it's certainly we do have plans to um improve uh you know uh the pedestrian safety on the Tropatoolis corridor, and I'm waiting on some contracts to come together right now so that I can follow up with your office on that.

But it's a matter of a couple of months before you know you will see those changes.

Uh the other area in district B is downtown, and buddy, you know this.

There's a lot of still uh motorcycles, cars uh doing burnouts, etc.

What are what's NOPD doing um to ensure the safety of folks downtown when we hear all of this craziness that happens?

Yes, ma'am.

So let me get into a few.

I know you have numbers that project all the way to 2023, but the most updated, updated numbers we have from 24 to 26, we're seeing a very good decrease.

Not decrease, I would like uh no death is one death is too many, right?

So our objective is to be proactive.

Um we've had to eliminate the car cameras and the some of the speed cameras that are currently erect due to um policy um and also through the legislation.

We'd like to get those back.

If you don't mind, I give you some numbers for the current so that you have some current, and I'll give you some abatement things we're trying to do to be proactive on that at the direction of the superintendent.

So total crashes for 2024 with injury or two 4,835 property damage crashes alone just by itself with 12,299 uh compared to 2025, 4,126 and 11,799.

That's a 14% decrease in crashes with injury, also a 4% decrease in crashes of damage.

We also want to make sure that we are on page in that enforcement, the data-driven approach that we're using to these crashes.

We're out there in full force doing our enforcement with whether it's DWI saturation patrols, DWI patrols, as well as saturation patrols as it becomes directed enforcement during the daytime hours.

So as you can see, we're doing a little bit better.

I our photo enforcement, we had in 2024 315,458 citations compared to 2025, whereas 1,753.

The reason that's significantly down is because we had to cut the camera and cut that operation out.

Otherwise, we would be up in the 300, 400 citations reviewed.

So here for fatalities, we were at 62 fatalities crashes with 60 uh four death compared to 2025, where we seen a big enforcement tick where we went down to 53 with 56.

However, continuing we're seeing a pedestrian-related fatalities, which we had 24 pedestrian fatalities in 25 compared to 30 in 2024.

Far too many.

We're seeing a lot of that with pedestrians trying to cross highways.

What we have done since my coming back there has also done public service announcements trying to push out the meshes through our social media platform about the intricacies of driving while distracted.

We've seen that come down a little bit, but it's not down far enough.

So as of now, we were 40% down in fatalities year to date compared to 25.

We had one this morning, unfortunately, we're dealing with crossing Chef Highway.

I'm currently dealing with that.

Uh it was a hit and run.

Um we're doing our due diligence to make sure we retrieve that vehicle and the occupant that's responsible for that.

But distracted driving seems to be a part of what we're dealing with now, and we're trying to constantly put this message out.

We're doing our enforcement operations in the areas in the corridors where we're seeing that, and we'll continue to do that.

We also receive emails from your constituents, and it's important that we not only go out there and they see us doing our job, but we're also reporting back as to what our findings are.

So to that measure, we are sending directed enforcement teams out there to combat that mornings and evenings, depending on the time of day.

So it's important that our citizens we keep on giving them feedback on what we did.

Just last week, we wrote over 2,000 citations.

So we're constantly doing proactive work to try to curtail bad driving habits.

And at y'all's direction, and Jennifer constantly sends me emails, we're constantly trying to hit those.

I'm I'm working with a limited enforcement team, but we're gonna keep attacking those.

Yeah, I mean, look, everybody knows about the sort of three-second rule that if you see a light turn green, you wait three seconds before you proceed through the intersection because you know someone's gonna blow through a red light.

And that's problematic.

I think the state shutting off our cameras has really hindered um safety for our folks, and we're seeing that in the numbers that you're reporting with pedestrian safety.

I would assume that a lot of this is a pedestrian tried to cross the street and had the right of way, but you know, the cars are distracted or they're just speeding and and going through crosswalks.

So, you know, anything that we can do to help mitigate that, I think this council is for.

On the issue of crosswalks, however, I know the past in the past, and this is the past administration, and I see Steve Nelson out there.

Um, we have been told oftentimes that we cannot get crosswalks in certain areas because the streets are so deteriorated.

Are there any other safety measures that we can put into place while we're waiting for these road work repairs to happen?

Um, yeah, so so you're referring to when the like asphalt is uh in not great condition, the thermoplastic we use for crosswalks does not stick to the asphalt.

So it basically wears away in in less than a month.

Um, you know, I you know, in every case we can look at, you know, is there a signage, uh additional signage that can be used?

Is there some sort of um you know striping uh uh you know elsewhere in the corridor that might assist with this uh this issue?

Um certainly we want to make sure that everything is uh, you know, we're not just throwing money at something that's gonna um you know wear away uh within weeks.

So um, yeah, that we we always look for other solutions.

Um that's I have a really good team that that works with me, and uh, you know, some sometimes people ask for stop signs, and that's something that requires more analysis, that sort of thing, than just uh um a warning sign or that sort of thing.

So I guess we have to explain that to the public um time and time again.

So um, yes, we're always looking for those kind of solutions.

Uh, if you have a specific request for a certain type of sign, that's why I think we can have that discussion.

Okay, great.

And thank you.

I know um people around Toro are very excited about the striping that happened because there were several accidents in Long Britannia by Toro, and now it's striped properly, and I people are very grateful for that.

We were very excited to work on um improving that corridor.

Yeah.

Couple more questions.

Um you all have a traffic study engineer in-house currently.

So we do not have a chief traffic engineer if that's what you're referring to.

Yes.

Um, the chief traffic engineer is written into the city charter as responsible for decisions about um traffic controls on our local streets.

Uh that we have not been without a position, and we are trying to fill that position.

Um I Steve can maybe speak to the current situation.

Steve Nelson, Director of Public Works, thank you for the question.

Uh Jennifer is correct.

We are actively uh pursuing and believe we have candidates for that position.

We are looking to hire that imminently so that we can address things like traffic studies uh in-house rather than having to go through procurement processes and use external contractors.

Perfect, thank you.

Um we did ask for a traffic study at the intersection of Washington Avenue in Denill in 2023 that still hasn't been completed, so hopefully that's at the top of your list.

Um my final questions have to do with sidewalk safety.

Uh one of my favorite constituents, Cassandra Sharp often complains about the people on sidewalks with their e-bikes, with their scooters, impacting pedestrians.

What are we doing about that?

So, Councilwoman, what we do is we send some enforcement teams.

Uh I think again, it comes to an education component and a messaging system.

Uh if we can do better on our social media platforms and messaging about what I I find it hard to believe that people aren't understanding that riding a bicycle on a sidewalk is dangerous for pedestrians.

We've seen pedestrians hit and hurt severely by bicyclists with those motorized bicycles on sidewalks.

We try to enforce that.

We go out our way to make sure we look for those in those areas of complaints, and again, we do our due diligence and enforce it.

Um we're trying to educate the public as well as enforce them, but right now, as it stands, we're limited on certain sections of the city that we're seeing the major component of it.

So when I deal with a fatality component, right?

I'm going to the fatality areas, take serious precedent.

So my enforcement team is out there doing hundreds of citations a day.

Um I'm trying to move them in areas that are impacted through y'all's emails and importance.

So we're going to continuously follow up on those areas.

I appreciate it.

I think maybe some signage saying no bikes, no scooters on sidewalks might be helpful too, and that seems to be a fairly inexpensive way to educate people.

Um couple more questions.

Golf carts, are they legal?

No, ma'am.

On operating on a street, if they don't have vehicle registration or a insurance, they're not legal and they're not able.

They have to have a license plate, insurance, and all of those to operate.

And it's my understanding that we're we have been doing a really good job of stopping them, but there's so many of them that I think that some of them tend to get aside from us on special events.

Yeah, especially during Mardi Gras.

I saw a lot of them out, and I've seen people paying or being paid for rides on golf carts, and I know that that's illegal, right?

Totally illegal, yes, ma'am.

Okay, so you can't have a golf cart to the thousands of people who are watching.

Party buses, illegal or not legal.

In operation for hire, they're illegal.

What does that mean?

That means that you can't they can't pay to have a party bus to drive around with sound uh amplified out and opportunities for somebody to be ejected in the course of a crash.

Some of these party buses have open area spaces, and that in a crash could cause somebody to be ejected off of that bus, and it's not uh I can give you the ordinances and send that to you, but we are trying to implement that, and I think the eight district is doing a good job of of stopping that type of situation, but we still have them outside of the French quarter area now.

So we have to have a task force team to tackle all of the party buses that are around in the city right now.

Yeah, they're um downtown.

I've seen them, I've seen them uptown too.

We get complaints about party buses, and we're not talking about the ones that are part of second lines, which their harnesses, et cetera.

But these are true party buses where people hire them, they have stripper poles, and they have amplified music.

Yes, ma'am.

And it's problematic.

Yes, ma'am.

And and that's something that we need to look at and put a task force towards just like we do our four-wheelers.

Uh, that's something that I think that we can try to put together a task force to go out there with multiple agencies to help us assist because there is a problem that we're seeing with complaints from four-wheelers, dirt bikes, um, but we have to have a way to combat that, and I think we can do that through several measures.

Um we can do that through surveillance, and when they stop, not to avoid a chase, when they stop or they go to a gas station, maybe surrounded and make sure that we confiscate that.

As you saw during last Mardi Gras, the state police did a great operation and they were able to assist us with those problems under the Claiborne Bridge, and you saw a big impact uh on that situation during Mardi Gras that helped us through the season.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for those questions, Councilmember Harris.

Council Member Willard Lewis.

Commissary.

Say that again?

I know.

I've done that before.

Thank you.

Councilmember Willard.

Thank you.

Captain Misha, just to piggyback off of some of what uh council member um Harris was talking about.

So the e-bikes and scooters, they're not allowed on sidewalks.

Correct.

A bicycle is supposed to work in a bicycle lane.

We spent what about when what if they don't have a bicycle lane?

That's what that's where I wanted to get.

So a a motorized scooter or bicycle has to operate on a street just like a bicycle.

If they have a bicycle, they're not allowed to ride on the sidewalks.

All right, that's a pedestrian walk.

But only if it has a motor or no bicycles, also they should be ridden on the street, and the motorists are subjected to make sure that they give the bicyclist an opportunity.

They can't rot up, they can't harass them, they can't force them, they got to give them a three to five foot window, and it's supposed to be operated just like vehicle.

Any vehicle laws pertain to bicycles and also pertain to motorized bicycles.

So, I mean, Jeannie, you know, look looking at the data, I was looking at it last night.

I mean, we are exceptionally high compared to you know, every other parish in the state, uh, as it relates to the pedestrian fatalities.

I mean, how much of that is, and I don't know if you have this information, but I would like to know, you know, how much is how much of it is um impaired driving, drunk driving, how much of it is distracted driving.

I think Captain Mishu, the legislature passed a bill to where you know, if you're holding your phone while you're driving, it's now a secondary violation, meaning you can get pulled over if you swerve and an officer sees you on your phone and you can get a ticket for that.

How much is it our our infrastructure as it relates to how pedestrians and people on bicycles and scooters and the new one-wheel thing, which I'm starting to see pop up a lot, um, and and how they interact?

Yeah, it's a great question.

And you know, just to f just to close out that point about this the spikes on the sidewalks, and I think you're getting at this question of if a bicyclist doesn't feel safe in the roadway, they're gonna be able to do that.

And there's so many spots in the city where they're not going to feel safe on the roadway.

Right, and we can't speak to why every person might get on the sidewalk with their bike or or e-bike, but if they're not safe, feeling safe in the roadway, they may go to the sidewalk.

So these things are all interconnected and creating that culture of safety, making the roadway feel more safer more safe for those vulnerable road users will make their behavior better too.

And so it is all connected.

But to your question about the fatality, so um, Will and our team actually lead the fatality review.

So starting last year, we started to do a deep dive on every vulnerable road user fatality in the city when it h we look at all the conditions.

What time of day was there lighting?

You know, was there an act a crash there two months before that?

What was there impairment?

So, what we found in our initial set of reviews is that impairment often is part of the equation of sometimes of the person that the pedestrian themselves and and often of the driver.

The problem is in identifying, and then also roadway safety contributes often.

There wasn't good lighting, or there wasn't a signalized walking space spot for the walker to the pedestrian to get across.

Um but one of the challenges that we have in that review is that a lot of them are hit and runs.

So we actually don't know if the driver was distracted or impaired.

Um, and so that creates sort of a gap in our knowledge of what's causing them.

And the legislature is also trying to address hit and runs and increased penalties for that this session.

But and the last thing I'll say is that speed, Jennifer mentioned, what even when there's often camera footage, so even if we don't know if the the driver was impaired or are distracted, we can see how fast they were going.

And speed, especially on those chef um fatalities and other uh highways, yeah, the speed is often a huge factor, and so that's where in the enforcement piece comes in and other w interventions to slow people down.

Okay.

Um have y'all given any thought to kind of the the traffic circles.

I was in Seattle earlier this year, and like long stretches of road are broken up by traffic circles, so you can't keep going straight, you have to do a little curve.

Yes.

Um we generally we have some older traffic circles in the city out at the lakefront, that sort of thing, but you're talking about something that is more of a modern roundabout and it's really designed for slowing vehicles and managing conflicts.

Um we do have some recommendations in our speed management program for how those would be applied to our street networks.

So it's all about finding the right candidates, but we intend that you will see that sort of modern approach to roundabout uh roundabouts for speed management on our local streets.

Okay.

Um 68% of the fatalities happen on a stretch of 130 miles in the city, 7% of the miles in the city.

Um are there commonalities with this 7%?

Like is there are there contributing factors that all of these roads that make up this 7% share?

Is it is it poor lighting?

I mean, one of my big frustrations as I drive throughout the city, and I know a lot of this stuff, you know, funding could be the obstacle, but just the striping.

I mean, late at night, sometimes streets are not lit up that well.

You don't know where your lane starts and the other one ends.

I mean, are there commonalities on this 7%?

Yeah, so the safety uh the safety action plan, that's what we want to, that's the way we started this process.

What are the commonalities?

What are the common denominators?

Where can we focus our attention?

Um, so if you think about the busier, wider streets with multiple lanes, um, those are the streets where we're seeing these problems.

Okay.

Um also, you know, on you know, streets where you have um uh, you know, you like you have lots of conflicts, like intersections, that sort of thing.

We see these kind of um issues.

And then um I would say, you know, wherever you have speed, you know, and so like those streets that are really built for high congestion times of the day, um, peak morning traffic, peak evening traffic, at night, they serve as speedways.

Yep.

So people are going super fast, and when you mix a pedestrian in with that formula, it's a recipe for disaster.

We also have um we're also looking at the land use role, like where you have land uses where say you have a convenience store, you have um uh a store where someone's going.

We see a lot of uh fatalities happening around where you have destinations that are people going to late in the evening, early in the morning.

So we're trying to untangle those and and really focus in okay, can we do um can we increase enforcement in these areas, or can we increase lighting, or can we modify the roadway geometry?

So that's part of this process and the the priority safety network.

We hope to come up with some um some demonstration projects where we can say this worked, and then we can apply it in other locations.

Okay.

Some some of the things that I think in discussions and with my people and the enforcement part of it, she did bring up a good point.

During peak traffic times, it's hard to speed.

Cars will get in and out of lanes.

However, that doesn't mean a crash can't occur, right?

There is distracted driving, people are busy trying to get where they got, and other people aren't paying attention.

Some of the things I thought of, but it's definitely gonna have to be a communication between uh our state, DOTD, uh, is that those times the speed limits where she says is speed up nighttime would be a different speed.

So there's that on the interstates.

Why can't we do that on some of our in there's still highways, state highways, but maybe we can do something about slowing the speeds down and then actively enforcing that after hours.

Um so I was thinking that there's a day speed and then there's an evening night speed.

I think this administration is doing a great job of isolating and designating light projects that may help us too to reduce it going forward.

And I think that's it plays an important role in the fatalities that I've been out.

I know it's dark out there.

So an individual wearing dark clothing with an individual going 40 miles an hour is still a hazard for us.

So educating the public to cross at intersections and not in the middle of the block became an issue for us.

We're trying to educate that.

Please cross at crosswalks.

But some of them don't want to walk a block down, and I understand that too.

And as she said, pedestrians play a role in also in impairment factor as well as distracted.

They're on their phones just like a driver is, and I think that's a hazard.

So those the lighting projects that we're doing with this administration and active enforcement that I'm putting forth over the last 12 months have, I think have paid dividends, but we're nowhere near where we want to be, and I think that's something that all of these ideas are great to bring up, but we also have to bring our DOTD partners in because as you know, DOTD is not out there enforcing it with this LSP.

We're out there doing our enforcement, and it is a state highway, so there's regulations that we have to juggle off of them as in order to put forth these measures.

I was gonna bring up Jaywalk and Captain Mishu, and and really the the issue there is I mean, we do have certain thoroughfares in New Orleans where people during certain times of the day are going beyond double the speed limit.

And so someone may be trying to cross the street right there thinking they have an abundance of time, and then all of a sudden a car is right up on them.

Um, you know, it goes back to the the kind of culture of compliance that I've been talking talking about, and unfortunately it has real world safety implications.

Um so I I look forward to working with you guys and and putting this uh safe streets plan into action.

It's it's desperately needed in the city of New Orleans, um, especially on something like this.

I think it was you, Jeannie, who said, you know, these are preventable deaths.

And and I and I totally agree with that.

Thank you.

I just wanted to add, Captain Mishie highlighted um DOTD and really working with DOT, the state on their state highways.

Um I've this is part of like the 22 years I've been doing this in New Orleans, working on safety problems.

I've been trying to work with DOTD, and DOTD has come a long way.

Um I think they're gonna be presenting on uh in St.

Claude.

So uh I I want to say that will continue, and we will continue to have very good coordination.

I think I've written about four million dollars worth of grants to apply on safety problems on the state, the state network.

Um so we will continue to be cooperative like that, and we hope to come back to you in another year and have another good report and show that these numbers are continuing to decline through this coordinated approach.

Yeah, and and look, anything that uh myself and I'm sure Councilmember Hughes can do as it relates to DOTD, we're happy to help.

Uh we have relationships there as former legislators.

Last question I want to ask you, uh Captain Me Shu.

So uh the the legislature passed the law, you you can't use the the red light cameras, the the speed cameras.

Um how is that impacting um from your like boots on the ground experience?

How is that impacting um you know accidents and fatalities?

Because when we were up there voting on that measure, it was kind of uh it was a tough spot to be in because you know, a lot of people in New Orleans thought that these mechanisms kind of just preyed on people, but at the same time, it was really the only mechanism we had to make sure that people weren't driving 70 miles an hour on the Legion Fields Avenue.

Now there's no red light, I mean there's no speeding ticket that they'll receive.

And so, I mean, we see it all the time, you know, and it's not just a Legion Fields, it's broad, it's Chef, it's it's major thoroughfare, it's chopper tools throughout the city.

How's that impact in from your experience?

So let me just say this, uh Councilman.

I think it's a major impact, and I understand people's subjection to a money-driven revenue.

I think that it gives us locations we can put enforcement vehicles with cameras to to basically make sure we curtail bad driving habits and be more responsible.

So in actuality, it's a very big deterrence for us when we don't have.

I got 10 cars sitting in our parking lot right now that's not used, brand new jeeps with up-to-date state-of-the-art cameras and radars in it that are just gonna sit there until the tires rot if we don't get something done.

I do believe it helps me because I don't have enough officers to put it all of these high profile speeding locations.

So we do need to monitor it.

And also, not just that, but we have used these camera systems in these cars in locations in neighborhoods where where there might have been an armed robbery or a shooting, and these cars have captured the license plates, they've captured the vehicles, their traverse areas.

So the license plate readers on them are definitely digital digitizing, and we can go back and see these movements of these individuals.

So, in my opinion, I don't look at it as a revenue builder because it has nothing to do with me at the end of the day, but I can tell you it does curtail most of the bad driving habits, especially in school zones in areas where our children could be impacted.

So it's detrimental for me to have them out there for enforcement purposes.

The only thing is the drawback on the cameras is that it's a more of a civil civil matter, right?

It's not a criminal matter.

So whereas we need to do a better job of finding out where these individuals are and make sure we hold them accountable for their bad driving habits.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Willard, and I will tell you that the it's a challenge, and I'm I'm not trying to give clues to these guys who are on Sundays and Saturdays just going crazy.

But without having an officer out there with the wand or without having a vehicle that can track the speeding, I'll just say it.

You've seen it on Legion Fields just this week, or within the last two weeks.

Two traffic lights were taken out.

You saw it.

And also at a Legion Fields and um and Alan Tucson.

But I see that throughout the district, to be very honest with you.

We have a problem in our city of some people who have decided that because there are no consequences, and they know that we can't have a police officer on every thoroughfare, that they are just simply gonna violate the law.

And we need those cameras if we want to regulate where the money goes, if we want to regulate, I don't care if it goes back to the state.

If they're concerned about the city, might make a dollar out of it.

If they're concerned about the city might make a dollar out of it, but there's no way for us to stop the speeding on Franklin, press, lesion fields, St.

Bernard, Paris, Gentilly Boulevard.

I can give you all of the places in the district where it's just out of control, especially on Sunday, and it shows in the fatalities.

I'm just asking you to, and I I appreciate the fact that we have good communications with DOTD.

So I want to let folks know, Mr.

Ball and the others, that I appreciate it.

But I know that you are overwhelmed too, whether it be because of the dirt and trash and the illegal dumping under interstate, and whether it be because it is speeding.

But we're here today to talk about traffic safety, and we can't talk about traffic safety if we don't have a larger police presence or if we can't use electronic communic electronic means to stop this trafficking.

I'm tired of the speeding that's on Gentili Boulevard between Franklin and Allegiant Fields, and you all aware of it.

But when we have an officer there, then the traffic goes to Allegiant Fields.

These guys know what they're doing.

Yes, sir.

They know what they're doing.

You know that they know what they're doing.

The only way that they're going to be curtailed is with a very heavy law enforcement presence, and that's got to include cameras too.

Now we actually have the ability to do the legislature, unless I'm wrong, and I could be wrong and correct me.

The legislature did not outlaw red light cameras, right?

The fixed object, red light cameras are operational at this point, but nothing to deter the speed.

And then let me first tell you this.

He's been great, his people have been great, and they're Johnny on the spot whenever we call them for special events or whatever.

There is a great communication with us, the city, and the state.

But I do want to, I don't want to forget the fact that we do need their help when it comes to state highways and having a partnership and legislation drawn up to make sure that we could do certain things that we're trying to implement.

And by any means, I know that y'all have my number that call me on any areas where impacted that I can rightfully send right away to to coordinate, and I've been doing that, and I'm hoping that the community has been talking back.

We 100%, and the superintendent 100% knows the quality of life is an issue that impacts traffic and pedestrian safety.

So y'all get the calls, we get the calls, and it's important for us to make sure everybody's quality of life in the city can enjoy the streets, and it's not just a one vehicle or bicycle, it's for all in everybody that traverses the city.

We want to make sure it's safe.

The safety action plan calls for significant investment by the state and the city.

Have you all had a discussion relative to the state's um potential input relative to the finances that are needed?

And you all know I discussed it in your meeting, but we have a very significant problem throughout our city that a significant percentage of the fatalities and the serious incidents take place on Chef Highway, Interstate 10, Interstate 610, Claiborne Avenue, and other state thoroughfares, Broad Street.

We need their help.

What are you determined relative to potential financing support?

Yes, so we have uh, as I mentioned, ongoing conversations with the state.

Um I know that they are funding at least two safety studies right now on state highways, which is St.

Claude and Hain Boulevard.

Uh also they're open to a discussion about Shaff mentor and funding something there.

In terms of safety improvements, they do have some safety improvements that they've made over the last um year, and then we'll continue in the future.

But um, we really need to all be, we'll be coming back to them with our safety action plan.

They did participate in the as a part of the project advisory committee in informing this our safety action plan.

We will be going back to them and having those conversations about okay, here's the priority safety network, how do we make things happen on this priority safety network?

Um, I would say that in council member uses district, we've got the Connecting New Orleans East uh project, which allows us to fund the preliminary design effort around the service roads, I tend service roads.

We're making uh some decisions around how we're prioritizing safety on the service roads, and then we'll make decisions about how we fund those those improvements.

That's all within the state's uh control.

State, state uh it's under the state's jurisdiction.

So, yes, um that those conversations have to be made, and we have to have honest conversations about like if we're we're not addressing the problem, then we're just sort of you know continuing the problem into the the next generation.

They're gonna have to deal with it.

So let's figure out we've got an action plan.

How can we make changes today?

I do like to when there's an opportunity to talk about the positive in terms of relations with the state.

So I want to make it clear that the Lafitte Greenway work that was done, the side, the signage, the lighting and the striping was done in cooperation with the state of Louisiana.

And it worked.

You know, there are fewer accidents there, and pedestrians can cross Broad Street at Lafeite at St.

Louis Street with fewer problems.

The reason that I continually push the same issue is because we have to be partners in my district, half of the thoroughfares, including parts of a Legion Field, are under the jurisdiction of the state of Louisiana.

We just need more support.

The bottom line is that we can't do it ourselves, even financially, but we can't do it ourselves because of jurisdictional issues.

So this um let's just continue to work to do what we can.

And you know, assuming that this safety action plan is adopted, that we work closely with the state, and you let the council know what we can do to facilitate the investments that are necessary to make those thoroughfares safer.

Well dude.

Okay.

We have uh council member Hughes.

Thank thank you, Mr.

Chairman, and uh good morning, everyone.

Let me uh thank you all uh for your collective work and uh appreciate you uh highlighting the uh safety study that's currently um taking place on Hayne.

Uh taking a little too long for me.

I've expressed that to DOTD.

We've been pushing them.

Uh this is something that my office helped initiate, but we need to collectively push to uh the state to have a little bit more urgency.

And and let me just say on the record, uh Chef, we we Chef is just no longer an option.

We we know we lost somebody just this morning.

I mean, how many more lives do we have to lose on Chef Highway?

There is a gross sense of urgency, uh, and far too many of these are hit and runs.

And so uh Chef has got to be a just a top priority uh to ensure that we do not lose uh any more lives.

Uh let me let me just ask, um, and and and while we're talking about enforcement.

Look, I I know NLPD is just stretched thin, and so we're all gonna have to collectively think outside the box on how we approach this work.

Um, but you know, I see far too many residents, especially in my district, just blowing through stop signs and red lights.

Uh like they just don't exist.

We might as well just go take them all down.

Um, and it's it's it's not only vehicles, but as bicycles as well.

And so more education, more enforcement.

You know, we we've got to act with a greater sense of urgency.

But I think until we start making an example of some of these bad actors, human behavior is just not going to change.

So thank you all for your collective work.

Thank you, Councilmember Hughes.

We have cards.

I want to remind our speakers that we have two minutes to speak, and I'm calling out for cards on the safety action plan.

If you have not turned in a card and you wish to speak on that item, please do so now.

I will go in order as they were received.

Bob Danton.

Thank you, Mr.

Danton, for being here.

Two minutes.

Thank you all.

Uh good morning, everyone.

Um I'm Bob Danton.

I'm here with three hats on.

Um, as a citizen, as uh the policy manager of Ride New Orleans, and also as a member of both the Complete Streets Coalition and the Complete Streets Working Group.

I want to thank everyone who's put so much energy into this plan.

Um, and I'm here to ask you, council members today, not just to adopt this plan, but to be champions for it.

Um there's been a lot of work uh put into this to understand um not just uh that we have a problem, but exactly where that problem is and what we can do to fix it, and it's a real opportunity here um going forward, and you all are gonna play a really crucial role in making sure that this is not another plan that gets signed and sits on a table, but it has actually turned into um you know a better future for the people of New Orleans.

Um we all need to work together, everyone in this room and everyone who's watching at home uh to make this happen.

Um the next step is implementation, and there's a big opportunity here.

We need to uh go for the implementation grant.

There's uh up to 25 million dollars of federal funds that we can get um to make some of this a reality.

Um and we also need to ensure that when we're doing routine maintenance, when we're when we're working on our streets, when we're working on the bond projects that the people of New Orleans have passed the um bond funding for that we're thinking about this uh plan, um, that we're thinking about the complete streets ordinance and that every time that we go out to to fix a pothole, we're thinking not just about that pothole, but about the future, about the safety of the people that use our streets.

Um so I'm here to thank everyone again and urge you again, not just to adopt this plan, but really to be champions for it.

Um, all the people of New Orleans deserve to be safe on our city streets.

Thank you all.

Thank you, Mr.

Danton, for being here this morning.

Ms.

Aspinia.

Hello, I feel I'm Mr.

Burnside today.

I'm gonna speak about everything.

Um I wanna point out something that Councilmember Hughes pointed human behavior.

One of the big goals and focuses of the safety action planning is this idea of the culture of safety.

We know as advocates that infrastructure alone will not fix the problem.

We need to change the way we behave in the road.

Uh New Orleans, uh, sorry, Bike C has been around for 23 years, and one of the projects that we have is the people-friendly driving class.

One big thing we did was we actually got the RTA to pay us to do an orientation video with RTA operators with RTA buses in the city of New Orleans.

And it's all about uh showing how we can share the road with people biking and people walking.

So we tried to do a lot of this education, and we know it's a big beast to tackle, but it's gonna be a big part of that.

So uh we're here as an organization supporting this resolution to be adopted, as Bob said, be champions about it.

And I also wanted to point out that the municipal code does state that uh no person 15 or 15 or more years of age shall ride a bicycle up on any sidewalk in the city, nor will bicycles be allowed on sidewalks in the business district.

So when we teach bike safety, we remind folks you have the same rights, but you also have the same responsibilities.

So riding the sidewalk is illegal.

Um happy to dive into more of this stuff, but we support these, and yeah, I have a lot of things to say, but I'll keep it at that.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comment and your advocacy.

Nellie Katzen.

And then it will be Mr.

South Hall, Morgan Clevinger, and Clark Thompson.

Good morning.

Nellie Katzen, 1242 St.

Rock Avenue.

I serve as co-chair of the New Orleans Complete Streets Coalition.

But today I am here speaking on behalf of myself and of my friend Sheree.

I will warn you that nobody wears a shirt with the face of a living person on it, so this is a sad story.

Cherie was a brilliant young nonprofit executive.

I didn't think I was gonna cry today, but I might.

She was a small business owner and a creative, passionate advocate for justice, and it is a map.

It's a matter of sheer coincidence that I am here talking to you today and not she.

We were riding bikes from our an endyman party to another parade downtown seven years ago, when Toshanti Tony drove a car 80 miles an hour into the bike lane that existed on Esplanade Avenue at the time, as it does today, injuring 12 people, killing two.

Um, and scarring many of us, including folks who just happen to be standing nearby or dining at the restaurants nearby for life.

Over a hundred people have died walking and biking in New Orleans since.

And we are all data points.

All 12 people that I just mentioned, including myself, are one dot on the map that you saw today.

One data point.

Behind each of those people in the hundreds that have died since each a story, a legacy, a family, and a community behind the data points in the plan that you have today.

My colleagues can talk about the data, can talk about the importance of showing up for this, but I decided to come here today to bring the human element because each of these people could be on the streets making New Orleans better today.

It is our responsibility in the room, especially those with the power to implement this plan and to champion this plan to make sure that we reach this goal of cutting the fatalities in half and by stopping them all together.

These are last city or not together.

Thank you, Ms.

Gatson.

And um, you remind us, yes.

You remind us of a very sad um story.

I attended the memorial service, for example, and um but it also reminds you, just as Councilmember Hughes said that there has to be, and it's hard to do an attitudinal change and a behavior change.

Who drives 80 miles an hour on Esplanade Avenue when you see pedestrians and you continue to move in that direction and you kill two people?

That person is in prison for a very long period of time.

But just the thought that somebody thought that that would not be harmful to other humans is just amazing to me still.

If I may, Councilman Green, none of us in this room, nor any of his friends celebrating his 34th birthday with him that day could have stopped Toshanti Tony from getting behind that car.

Nobody could have stopped his car from killing the people that he hit.

And the his sentence that he's serving is not stopping anybody from killing the hundreds of people who have died since.

What we can do is build better streets and better infrastructure to do the sorts of traffic calming.

Yes, enforcement is important, and I'm really grateful for the work that NOPD does.

I'm grateful for the work that folks like Bike Easy and others do to educate drivers on how to drive more safely, and people are gonna make dumb decisions, period.

What we can do is stop those dumb decisions from causing people to die.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

V Frank Southall.

Uh good morning, everyone.

Uh Yasing Frank Southwell organized and community gauge manager at Jane Police Snippers, Steamboat Initiative.

I'm also proud member of Bike Easy.

I've been involved in community bicycle projects for and have been the daily cyclist and pedestrian for almost 20 years.

Um I've known many, many community members have been killed or murdered due to shrectic fuse and they're intoxicated drivers.

But as Nelly mentioned, this is also an issue of safety and design, right?

We don't plan for a world in which we assume that we're all on the same page.

We plan for a world where safety uh intelligence is utilized to to make sure that even the dumbest incompetent driver um can navigate the streets and not murder people.

Um I've known many, many other people have been injured due to bad design safety issues since St.

Claude, Broad, and other places.

I myself have been injured and door many times in this city.

Um while the physical aspects of my injuries have healed, um uh the emotional and mental um issues remain.

Um I know this from many other folks.

Um I also want to say the improving transit issues in the East is one equity, um, as it relates to how we view this work.

Um, as more and more working class, predominantly black folks are displaced to the east and Algiers.

Um, we are seeing more and more accidents of people crossing highways, across read.

Um I myself have ridden my bike uh before I had staff at Jane Place, thank God.

Um, you know, to places like the Willows and Park Fontaine, and it's hell.

Um, and so we need to think about how we're improving the design safety, those areas, including BRT and better bike lanes of MacArthur.

Um, so yeah, let's create a better landscape for people to meet the realities of what we need, and let's not forget about infrastructure in our most vulnerable places.

Thank you all for your time.

Thank you, Mr.

South Hall.

Um, Margan Clevinger.

Good afternoon.

I'm Morgan Clevinger, 1653 North Broad, Fairgrounds Triangle Neighborhood Association, First District Police Community Advisory Board.

Um, first I want to thank this committee, um, Captain Misho, who we've met with multiple times in 2025 on these issues.

Um, and I also want to recognize uh Carrie Fat Man Hunter, Grammy winning uh musician uh from uh sixth and the seventh ward, very dear friend who was killed by a drunk driver two years ago as a pedestrian.

And during that uh trial, um the person that killed him walked away without even a speeding ticket, even though the camera footage showed his incredibly high rate of speed and his uh impairment.

So there's a lot to say on this, but first I would like to say thank you for continuing this because the community, many of us have invested years into uh complete streets and um the safety plan and the safe streets initiative, Gentili, Broad, uh St.

Bernard, these are literally seven, eight-block stretches where we see an extraordinary number of fatal wrecks, massive crashes, seven blocks, seven blocks.

And it has the data that's in your plan is I believe from 2023.

In 2024 and 25, it has exploded.

Um so not only is this a human issue, a safety issue, a health issue, but I want to point out as well.

Wrecks um speeding have taken out so much infrastructure.

Right now, there are two lights out on broad, one at Bayou Road, one at Esplanade.

They have been replaced every few months.

We have buildings, homes, businesses.

And it costs a lot.

So these support these hope that we need to continue to keep the community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And you do bring up an issue that isn't hasn't been discussed.

The immense cost to the city of replacing these many lights that are out because people run into them.

Domin Road is missing at least four lights, four lights.

As I mentioned just this week, a light out at Mirabu and Allegian Fields.

People are getting injured in these accidents too, but also illusion fields, and I could I could go into other places too.

But um behavioral change is important, but people also need to recognize that they're getting injured with this driving at high rates of speed on Saturday nights and Sundays during the day.

A lot of injuries happen, but it's an immense cost to the city.

Clark Thompson.

Hello, Clark Thompson, uh 269, Zephyr Boulevard, uh representing New Orleans Ghost Bikes and myself.

Um first off, I would love to see an actual accounting of the infrastructure damaged by um by violent motorists.

I would love it if if the DPW could report how many curbs are ripped apart, how many stanchions are ripped apart, how many stoplights, how many street lights, how many stop signs are destroyed, how many millions, tens of millions of dollars is our government spending to uh to cover for these uninsured, unaccountable violent motorists.

Second, 373 people seriously injured every year in our city right now.

Now, as Nelly mentioned, this is not just 373 people injured, violently injured.

This is how many thousands of people witnessed this and are traumatized by this and the trauma that's embedded within our children in this city.

And we know the we know from other studies the impact that this trauma causes in their lives that trickles on down to all sorts of other issues.

373 people injured.

I was one of the witnesses to uh DeShante Tony's murders of those people on Esplanade Avenue.

My wife and my daughter were walking out of Kinseyko's uh grocery.

They were eyewitnesses to it.

They came and ran to me, and I stood by while someone attempted CPR on uh on uh on David Heinz that was killed along with Cherie.

Um there were dozens of people, if not hundreds of people out there that night that were traumatized and live with that was caused by that violent motorist.

And in every case, as it's already been mentioned, speed is the factor that is uh in all these cases, speed is the factor.

We need to slow the speed of the cars through signage.

Education is not captured, it's not in people that need to be educated.

We need to have physical barriers protecting protecting cycles.

Thank you very much.

In addition, we need to have people understand the implications and the impacts of their speeding, but it does.

There are only so many physical barricades I can put between there's no physical barricade that I can put between Gentiles Boulevard and Mirabu, where there's no stop sign, there's not, I mean no stop sign, no traffic light, but it doesn't mean that it becomes a racetrack on Saturdays and Sundays.

I'm putting out a warning to the people who are speeding that it's costing lives, it's costing your lives.

And if you hit somebody and run, you are the most despicable person out there.

We have losed so many people in our city to people who hit others and run as if they're not part of the human race.

Stay around and take the responsibility, but also help those people.

Um I was witness to an accident on Sunday on Clayborn Avenue.

Um, and um I want to say to the members of the public who gathered around a motorcyclist who was flipped twice in the air and came down on his head, the concern that they showed is the concern that should be showed with anyone who's injured in our city.

Um I just don't have the words for it, but anyone who runs after hitting someone is just somebody who is despicable and who really needs to get some sort of help in addition to being incarcerated for those actions.

But I want to thank the Department of Public Works, I want to thank the Health Department, the New Orleans Police Department for the research that has gone into the safety action plan.

I also want to thank the members of the public, because members of the public had input here.

Um approval of this resolution means that we kind of get started with a plan.

It means that this plan could be altered as necessary.

And the support that we need, not only from the public, but from government.

So at this time, without if there are no additional comments, I'm gonna move for approval of resolution 26137, which simply adopts the safety action plan.

I'll ask for a second.

If there's no additional comments, members, please vote your machines.

I did everything based on the cards that I had, I said.

Oh, there's another card.

Okay, before we vote, let's let's get this other card.

And thank you for your comment.

I just didn't have it here.

Thank you.

I filled one out earlier, but I filled out a second one too.

Yeah, I just want to speak in favor of this uh plan.

Uh for decades, our streets have been planned for the oil industry, for oil consumption, for the automobile industry to make billions of dollars a year on our city.

And the speed that we are witnessing in New Orleans is a result of the infrastructure that's been planned.

So it's been designed this way.

Um, and I feel like the black community has extensively felt the brunt of this type of planning.

Uh it culminated in the overpass that went over Claiborne Avenue that devastated the Tremor neighborhood, for example.

And we still see the devastating effects of the oil industry's influence on our streets.

Currently, they're privatized for oil consumption for the automobile industry.

We need to see our streets made public.

And how's that gonna happen?

And this is part of the plan.

We need complete streets.

We need pedestrians to have uh adequate infrastructure with ADA capability.

We need separated bike lanes with a buffer on them.

Um I didn't witness this man, but I saw his body on St.

Claude Avenue, uh Myron Lockett.

This was back in uh July.

He got he was in the bike lane, and it was an oil tanker, very symbolic of what we're dealing with, that turned the corner uh onto Franklin and ran this man over.

I saw his body uh under the back wheel of the oil tanker.

We need to get the oil industry off of our backs, and the most uh effective way we can do that is with infrastructure.

We could have enforcement all day long.

We've had infrastructure info uh enforcement for decades.

It hasn't proved to protect us.

We need the infrastructure in place to do so.

So I want uh to admonish y'all uh please consider separated bike lanes, uh extended crosswalks.

And thank you, Mr.

Guard.

Your um comments are appreciated.

Members, I've moved and it was second by council member Willard to approve the resolution um 26137.

Members, you voted your machines and the councilman King.

Do you understand?

So we have five years.

The safety action plan will be submitted to the council, and um, I appreciate everyone's participation.

This matter can be included on the consent agenda, yes.

Yes.

All right, the item number item number four.

Madam Clerk, item number four.

Sure.

This is the quarterly progress report for the comprehensive traffic safety study of the St.

Claude Avenue Corridor pursuant to resolution number R25 430.

Scott Boyle with the Louisiana Department of Transportation.

Thank you, Mr.

Barrell.

Morning, everybody.

Could you identify yourself again just for the public watching?

I'm Scott Boyle.

I'm the district engineer administrator for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development in the New Orleans District.

Thank you, Mr.

Barr.

So I was asked to appear by Councilman King to give an update on the St.

Claude Avenue, also known as LA 46 studies that DOTD is procuring and working on.

I got an update from our headquarters section in Baton Rouge who's administering the contract, and those contracts are still being negotiated with the consultants.

The scope is still being developed.

We are getting very close to executing those contracts to where we're going to have a consultant start studying.

There's going to be two contracts.

One is going to be a short-term that will be utilized to investigate the feasibility of a very near-term improvements, safety improvements that we can implement on St.

Claude Avenue.

Those will include curb ramps, traffic signal upgrades for pedestrians, potential parking restrictions, striping improvements.

With that contract being executed within the next couple of months.

There's been some back and forth with the contract.

Basically, how this works is that we we have consultants on retainer and we work with them and tell them what we would like, and there's negotiations as far as what you know to develop a scope to get this done.

So that's where we are.

We're in the final stages of these adjustments to get to a point where we can get the consultant on board working.

Concurrently, we also have a long-term contract that's being developed, and it should be executed in a similar time frame that what's being developed with the sh with the short-term contract.

This is going to entail what major improvements can be utilized and implemented on St.

Claude Avenue.

This this is going to include possibly relocating the bike path to the median.

We're looking at total signal upgrades.

We're looking at separated protected bike lanes.

So, you know, I gave a presentation with some of you at a at a church last year, and the department has committed to doing this, and we have been working diligently to make this happen.

So we're looking at everything's on the table.

Of course, this would just be a feasibility, and once recommendations come out of that long-term study, we would have to work with the city, the regional planning commission to see what we could do to get a project together and find funding to do this.

You know, we're anticipating for long-term improvements on St.

Claude Avenue with a with a project limit being from Elesion Fields to the St.

Claude Bridge.

You know, we're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of potentially 30 million dollars.

So this is not going to be putting a couple uh no parking signs and uh you know refurbished the striping on the on the uh corridor.

So we're looking at major things, potentially taken away from the median, doing widening, you know, restricting parking is this it's it's it's gonna be quite an extensive study to undertake, which will involve traffic counts, looking at crash data, look field observations and and geometric conditions of what we physically are able to do while managing other aspects that this is a corridor that is utilized by trucks, which is a corridor that is utilized by quite a bit of vehicles.

So which is a court order, supports parking for not only people that have businesses along St.

Claude, but also people that park there that live live there and need to park adjacent to our highway for for parking for their residents.

So these are a number of things.

For the long-term study, we we will have stakeholder engagement, which will be working very closely with y'all with uh the city with the residents to get input.

They'll they'll at the very minimum be at least two or three meetings to give updates as as this develops with this study, but but to make sure that we get involvement and and and in stakeholder uh you know uh feedback.

So we'll you know, we're very excited about that.

Uh you know, we've identified that there is a need, you know, there's been some tragic crashes that have occurred on St.

Claude Avenue over the years.

You know, over five years ago, DOTD implemented a major safety issue at St.

Claude and Elesion Fields.

We we we had a uh a tragic event where uh an 18-wheeler was turning right from St.

Claude Avenue traveling westbound onto a lesion fields northbound, and and there was a crash that that resulted in a bicycle fatality there.

We went ahead as a result of that and implemented a geometric and striping change to where motorists are to get over before they get to Allegian fields to turn right to try to minimize that conflict between bicyclists and vehicular traffic.

So and and of course, recently I believe there were two fatalities that occurred on St.

Claude within a very short time frame within the last 12 months or so.

So we are aware we're we're working diligently and expeditiously to move this process along.

And you know, we've we've worked with the city, and we're gonna continue to do so to do to do our part to make these roads as safe and efficient as possible.

So if there's any questions, I can answer.

I have a couple of questions.

Council member King.

Thank you, Mr.

Ball.

How soon can we see the short-term changes implemented?

At this time, we're looking to get the contract executed within the next two months.

Study will begin.

Some of this work has been done as far as the signal upgrades that we're planning from a different project.

I would feel comfortable estimating, giving you a good faith estimate that we we could see positive implementable things within the next 12 to 18 months that would that would include these these uh uh curb ramps, the these curbic uh bulb outs, these traffic signal push buttons with pedestrians, the striping, the the parking restrictions, we've already implemented that at Allegian Fields on St.

Claude right there by the uh grocery store that's there.

We've already done that with in-house forces.

There may be some opportunities to restrict parking at other locations, at higher volume pedestrian locations.

The intent of these short-term improvements is to get pedestrians to where the crossing has to be minimal.

We we want to get them across as as quickly and as safely as we can.

And and the curb the these curb extensions will narrow down, narrow down that path, give give time with these traffic signals, uh additional to the time that's inherent with a traffic signal that operates to us on right-of-way for for vehicles.

So to answer your question, 12 to 18 months.

And can you just educate myself and those who may not know exactly what since it's a state highway, what authority does the city have to make changes without state approval or without state assistance on St.

Claude?

Because a lot of people think at times the city can just go out and make changes as they see fit, but there's a process because it's a state highway.

I'm correct.

And can you explain that to us in some detail?

Yes.

Yes, DOTD has full authority over the maintenance and operation of of all state highways uh throughout Louisiana.

That's in the that's that's in the law that that we're given authority.

And what that covers is that covers uh speed limit changes that that covers no parking.

There are some local ordinances and and different type of things that the city uh as far as the law that the city can do.

The city can uh NOPD can enforce the law on on a state highway along with state police.

But as far as any type of engineering maintenance, unless there's an agreement, traffic control type changes, those have to come through the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.

That would include the implementation of traffic signals, uh stop signs.

That would include changing the speed limit, striping changes, putting in bike lanes, putting in crosswalks, parking in the meeting in the median of the highway.

Anything that would pertain to the operation or maintenance of that highway would have to go through the DOTD on a state highway.

Of course, we do work with the city, we get requests all of the time.

We get requests from elected officials within the city.

You know, hey, can we can we put no parking signs here?

You know, I'd really think can we lower the speed limit?

We would do a study to do that.

So these are things that we we're responsible for.

We have to defend in court in the in, you know, when when the when there's issues, we have to answer for these.

So you know it's our responsibility to and we follow uh guidelines in the manual on uniform traffic control devices as well as other policies that DOTD has implemented that that are consistent on all state highways.

And that includes St.

Claude, that includes LA numbered highways, that includes U.S.

highways such as Chefman tour highway, US 90, and that includes the interstate system, interstate 10, and the state 510.

We consistently apply these policies throughout the state.

That's a lot.

You get so many emails from my office because in my district alone, Claiborne Avenue, Elesion Fields, Chefmantour Highway, Broad Gentilly, for example, state thoroughfares.

Um Lakeshore Drive, State Thoroughfair.

Even though it comes under the jurisdiction, I guess, of the Lakefront Management Authority, which is still a state agency.

I guess I'm just saying that um the state's got to give a little bit more help, to be very honest with you, because we sent you something today about a homeless encampment under the Allegiant Fields Bridge at Florida Avenue, and that's a state thoroughfare.

At the end of the day, you're there's some assistance that I know that you need.

But I appreciate your sincerity in getting back to us.

And it's a little bit tough because it's so much to do, but we'll continue to work with you, but we want to continue to put pressure on.

Um it's unfortunate that so much has to be done on the city level when we see things that can't always be seen from Baton Rouge.

And it's a challenge to all of us.

Some of the suggestions that we make, we know are hard to implement because they're not city thoroughfares.

But um, I appreciate your willingness to accept our you know, comments and work has been gotten done that we appreciate greatly.

No, I thank you, Councilman, for that feedback.

Okay.

Uh, Councilmember Hughes.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh Scott, good morning.

Um, I think this is the first time I've seen you on this side, but um I won't veer from from St.

Claude, because I know that's the topic of discussion, but I just wanted to on the record thank you.

Thank Justin, thank your team uh for the partnership for your responsiveness.

Uh we obviously have a lot of work to do moving forward, and I'll be reaching out to you about some things in District E, but um it has been a great partnership and look forward to that partnership continuing uh as we strive to make our city uh a better place.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councilman.

I I appreciate that feedback.

Thank you.

We have comment cards, remember, two minutes.

Um, and I'll go in order received.

Ms.

Laspinia, and look, correct me on the pronouncing pronouncing of your name.

I'm gonna say Elena's Laspinia.

You correct us on the record, and then the next time it comes up, because you're with bike easy, I'll be seeing you at least every quarter.

I want to pronounce it correctly.

Laspina.

No N, it's N.

Okay, Laspina.

Yeah, correct.

Okay.

Um still with Bike C since two hours ago.

Scott, great to see you here.

Um I'm disappointed to hear the timeline, but I'm happy the bully's rolling.

I know this is beyond my control.

It is uh sad to think that implementation will not happen before the summer, which tends to be the aptick on the issues in my observation of what's happening in St.

Claude.

One thing I want to mention is, you know, the regular road user, I used to work at door furniture.

So imagine if I'm biking from there to Poland and St.

Claude, I'm going for militia and fields protected bike lane, and then I turn, and as a regular user that doesn't know anything about what a state road and a city road is in the city, like we're not thinking about these kind of things.

And I think as an organization for the last three years since Dustin Strom die died, actually almost four years ago, we've been working closely with Councilmember King to figure out how we can make these uh state roads safer.

So shout out to Councilmember King for helping us with these.

But we believe that bringing people to the table rather than pointing fingers, the state does this is the city does these NOPD has to do enforcement, et cetera.

Like we can make a model of how state roads in our city can work together and encourage that this study also includes uh safer connection and a better connection to the lower ninth because a lot of people who live in Holy Cross are coming to the city to work, and that connection eight sparked in my opinion of that project.

And this is something we can also use in the future for chef mentor.

So I appreciate everybody's attention on these.

And um, yeah, I mean, you know, we'll be keeping in touch on this timeline, and hopefully it happens faster.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Lespina.

Gary Gaboard.

Or is it Gabriel?

Just give me the correct pronunciation.

Gabriel.

Appreciate it.

Critical mass NOLA.

Um we led the die-ins on St.

Claude Avenue when Michael Mealam was killed on Elvar uh last year, and when Myron Lockett got killed on uh St.

Claude as well.

So that's two fatalities.

And so we're grassroots kind of organizing uh branch in the city, and we put our ear to to the street to hear what people have to say and what people are demanding and want on St.

Claude is a separated bike lane with a protected barrier adjacent to the sidewalk.

Uh folks want to extend the crosswalks on St.

Claude.

In other words, the uh sidewalk where people cross should extend all the way to the street to lower the distance that people actually have to walk on.

Um and folks want to see uh uh uh a bus stop island where the the bike lane actually operates behind the bus stop because uh too often we are in conflict with the bus.

Well, right now there's a bus stop in the bike lane on St.

Cloud by um not yeah, by road bears.

I mean it's actually in the bike lane.

And so too often there's conflicts with the buses, and this ultimately this infrastructure will slow down traffic because as y'all know, people are driving on St.

Claude, 60, 70 miles an hour, and it's absolutely out of control.

And this infrastructure uh with extended crosswalks will force cars to slow down, and that's what we need to see.

It is a state highway, we understand that, but it's also a place of business, it's a place where we go uh for nightlife, it's a place where there's our galleries, it's a community hub, it needs to be treated as such and protect people's lives.

So uh we asking y'all to advocate with us for the separated bike lane on St.

Claude and this infrastructure.

Thank y'all.

Thank you, Mr.

Gabriel.

Lauren Najel or Nigel, then Morgan Clevinger, Bob Denton, or Danton, and Clark Thompson in that honor.

Your last name is pronounced.

Sure, Nagel.

Uh good afternoon, everybody.

I'm Lauren Nagel.

I'm the education program's manager with Bike Easy.

Um, and I wanted to thank you, Mr.

Doyle, for presenting your updates.

I uh just want to remind everybody about why resolution 23 or 254 30 was unanimously approved last August because of the numerous deaths that happened on St.

Claude, terrifying deaths, and we know that St.

Claude is an actually terrifying and deadly highway to be a pedestrian, a vehicle a motor vehicleist and uh uh and a bicyclist on.

It's also one of our city's busiest corridors for uh businesses and nightlife, and continue to take the lives of those who use it.

Um, so the fatal crashes took the lives of Myron Lockett and Michael Million uh within 10 days of each other in July 2025, which spurred this resolution, and before that, Dustin Strome, Wayne Geek, and Cherry Stewart all died from high-speed vehicle crashes.

Um, and please know that this is not a complete list of those who've died in traffic violence along this avenue.

Um, bike easy alongside our bicycle pedestrian transit using community members know there's only one solution is to create a protected separated bike lane along St.

Claude's shield from traffic with a physical barrier, not just plastic flex posts or painted lines.

Like my colleagues have expressed, you know, we can only educate drivers so much we have to create the smart complete streets infrastructure to keep um drivers from actually crashing into pedestrians and motor and bicyclists.

Um we'd also like to see increased lighting and traffic enforcement to reduce blind spots for both drivers.

We know that there's tons of blind spots that happen because cars park right on the edge of the intersections.

Um making these improvements is not gonna just help the social.

Thank you, Ms.

Nagel.

Margan Clavinger.

Thank you.

Um we're really grateful to see the progress on St.

Claude.

I hope that we can see that same effort and organizing an advocacy around Broad, around Gentilly.

Um we have uh very grateful that Representative Alonzo Knox um came to every single one of our meetings last year.

Um First District Police Community Advisory Board and Fairgrounds Triangle Neighborhood.

We did see a slight improvement with DOTD coming in, low hanging fruit, replacing signs, adding new signs.

We need traffic signals.

We requested a traffic study.

We don't know where that stands.

And we need your help in three weeks.

We have Jazz Fest on Gentili.

We have been asking for a light at Tentilly at the Fairgrounds entrance for 15 years, with the support of Churchill Downs, and yet we still cannot get one.

And that's where many of our crashes and and pedestrians are hit.

We also have a big problem at Gentili in Castiglione, similar to St.

Claude, in the sense that the site lines are completely blocked by people parking in the bike lanes, the travel lanes, food, uh just craziness.

Um but speeding is uh is a major factor in all of this and disregarding the signage that's already there.

So um I'm gonna meet with Captain uh Buddy after we uh finish this uh because we submitted our request um for Jazz Fest.

The the impact of traffic on and safety on the surrounding neighborhood has exceeded anything we ever have seen in our life.

So we need your help.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Bob Danton.

And then Clark Thompson.

Hello again, everyone.

Bob Dan Ton with Rad New Orleans.

Um I just want to uh emphasize and bring up that in addition to uh pedestrians and bicyclists, St.

Claude is a major thoroughfare for public transit users.

The eight bus is one of the highest ridership buses in our city.

Um and in doing this study, I really urge you to think holistically about the needs of the transit riders as well.

And I thank you, uh Eric, for uh his comments as well.

Um we need bus islands, bus boarding islands.

We need the folks that are getting on the bus to be able to do so safely without having to walk out into traffic, and we need that infrastructure to work holistically with the bike infrastructure, um, a bus island in the middle of the street with a or in in the street um with the bike lane behind it, a protected bike lane behind it is the way to go.

Um this has been proven in cities all over the country, and there's no reason that we uh shouldn't have the nice things that people around the United States do.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr.

Dan Tong.

Mr.

Clark Thompson.

Who lives on New Orleans newest named street, Zephyr Boulevard.

That's true, that's true.

Uh Clark Thompson 269 Zephyr Boulevard.

Um for your for your information is as infree or less frequent riders than me, I suspect.

Um I've been doing it daily for 40 years now in the city.

Um so for your awareness, um, Mr.

Boyle spoke a moment ago about this intervention that they put in place at St.

Claude in Allegian.

Simple, pretty pretty simple intervention there that makes a huge difference in my life and other riders who are who are on St.

Claude.

It's a tremendous safety improvement, simply going and providing that little bit of separation, that little bit of visual cue for drivers that um not a stop, not a 25 mile an hour sign, but an actual yellow paint, some deviation in the road that brings it to the driver's attention.

This works.

It's what's scary, and uh as people have mentioned earlier, the uh the bus stopping in the middle of the bike lane.

This situation is a strong reason that we need bus islands.

Um it's terrifying.

It's fine, it's pretty good for me.

I've done it for 40 years, but for less experienced riders suddenly be bottled up behind a bus and have cars approaching from behind.

It's 50, 60, 70 miles an hour, is terrifying to be stuck trapped there behind that bus.

So these bus islands can't emphasize enough what a what a difference this makes, especially for the less experienced riders for the older riders for the children, which are the people that we want to go and get a get out on the road.

Um I'd like to deviate just for a moment, Mr.

Boyle.

Thank you so much for coming.

And uh and that you're still working with us.

Very glad to see you here.

Um I know that uh the Carrollton Avenue underpass study is something that we was going on year we've talked about years ago, and um I'm I'm hoping that in our next meeting, next quarterly meeting.

Um I suppose I'll email more and we can follow up on that.

Um second to that is uh is Clavering Avenue at the Greenway.

Um as you mentioned at the Greenway, Clayburn Avenue is a frightening crossing.

And um, and we desperately need speed cameras.

We definitely need speed across.

Thank you very much for your um comments, Mr.

Thompson.

And I know uh Mr.

Ball is taking all this information in, but I want to thank you for being here.

I want to um look forward to seeing you every quarter and to seeing some of the progress that takes place.

And again, um I'm appreciative of the work that you do.

I am um somewhat critical, as you know, of the state in general, because there's so many so many thoroughfares in our district that come under the jurisdiction of the state and so many other properties.

But when we've reached out to you, you've been available, you've come to meetings, you've met with the community, and I just want to say I appreciate that.

And on the issue of St.

Claude, um, certainly we want to see things done in this timely a manner as possible.

But I want to thank Councilman King for his advocacy for that thoroughfare to be as safe as possible, and we're gonna work in this committee to make sure that that happens.

Thank you very much for being here today.

Thank you, Councilman.

DOTD is committed.

I will be appearing here uh every quarter or uh when I'm asked to to provide updates, and uh you know, we value our continued partnership with the city to to to make our roads as safe and efficient as possible for everyone.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

We're gonna move on to item number six.

I want to alert members of the public that um you can actually follow the presentations on um line by simply searching the city council and going to the city council's agenda.

For example, the presentations that you see that are on the screen can be found easily on your phone too.

So at this time, we'll move to item number six, regional transit authority.

This is an update on uh the RTA's current ridership trends.

Um key operational updates, capital projects, and the forthcoming New Orleans East Service Improvement Plan.

We have Leonard Hankins, uh CEO of RTA.

I appreciate the patience, and I want to say it on the record for everyone who makes a presentation who is gonna be here for a little while today.

We have executive directors of our you know airport and the regional transit authority here.

We meet on a quarterly basis because they attend a lot of meetings, including their board meetings, but the fact that you all are here to make your presentation today and that you're um here and able to be here despite the length of our meeting is greatly appreciated.

I want to let you know that.

Ms.

Hankins, could you identify yourself again for the public that's watching?

Good morning.

My name is Lona Edwards Hankins, CEO of the RTA.

I have with me Giselle Johnson Banks, my chief our chief strategy um and chief financial officer.

So thank you for allowing us to um come and make a presentation on all of the updates that are and the goings on that we have at the RTA.

Um I was um grateful for the adoption of the safety plan because pedestrian safety is crucial for public transit riders.

So our ridership trends, ridership for the end of 2025.

We saw the highest um increase in bus ridership.

We are about a hundred and thirteen percent um of uh 2019 ridership.

That's um leading the nation in the the national average for bus ridership post-COVID recovery is about 85 percent.

We're lagging behind on the streetcar um a little bit.

The national um average is 72 percent, and we're currently about 60 percent of um uh 2019 levels.

And partially also because of our local ongoing construction or infrastructure issues that we've seen in the last year or so.

Paratransit Ridership is also running about 160,000 trips per year, and then ferry is running between the two services about right at just shy of a million.

I must say, since 2019, we've hit the five million mark on ferry ridership, and some of that is attributed to the improved reliability over the of the ferries over the last five years.

The new ferries that we have onboarded as well as the specialized vendor having a marine vendor really helps us improve that that service.

So our opportunity pass.

Some of you are familiar with the opportunity pass.

This is the grant that we've received from the city to fund the fairs for our youth 16 to 2024.

We have successfully signed up roughly just shy of uh 9,000 young people, and they are activating this pass on a regular basis.

So we have this pass is a pilot and a partnership between RIDE, the Youth Planning Board, the library, and the RTA.

And so a couple of things we're doing this year to try to up the usage.

So Ride, our partner, they coordinate community outreach, partner engagement, but they also facilitate and train youth ambassadors who we are listening to because this is a youth-led initiative.

And so they are coming up with ideas on understanding how we need to increase our marketing campaign, what are the access to barriers, what are our access barriers that we can eliminate, as well as how do we increase usage among existing participants.

We have recently activated about 391,000 passes.

So the trips they're using it, but how do we increase that?

So there's some focus groups going on as well as some additional marketing that we'll be rolling out later this spring.

As it relates to operations, we are really focused on improving our service for para transit.

Our board just approved some technology schedule and update in our uh technology.

So we're big procuring some new software.

Um that software has not been updated since 2017.

The beauty of this software is it is a dynamic software, dynamic scheduling software, very similar to what you might have with the private ride share companies, um, as well as the goal is to increase our operational efficiencies and to reduce wait times for our our clients.

We've also launched additional customer service training for our operators, our dispatchers, our reservationists, so that we can improve the quality of service that this clientele is experienced.

Additionally, we've just been awarded another 27.2 million dollars for uh vehicles.

Um many of you know about our low no grant where we received um roughly at the time 71 million dollars from the federal government to buy all electric vehicles.

This current administration does not support electric vehicles, so we had to retool our ask, and we're in the process of retooling the ask and are gonna pivot to compressed natural gas.

We will have to, between these two grants, we now have enough funds to get us to what our optimal plan is for for vehicles, 140 vehicles.

So we have enough funds between the federal and our local share to get us to that.

However, some of this is going to take us a minute from the procurement process prospect and a manufacturing prospect because with all the money that the former administration released for vehicles, um, what we're seeing now is a bus that might have taken six months to get here is now taking two years to get here.

So there's a two-year backlog.

We are working on this grant because at both grants, because um, as I mentioned earlier, one was designed for retrofitting our facilities for electrical.

Now we need to retrofit our facilities and retrain our mechanics on compressed natural gas.

So it's a shift in scope.

So that's what we're doing.

Additionally, we have three electric vehicles already at our facility that we are building out the charging infrastructure to do a pilot, and that pilot will circulate those three electric vehicles in New Orleans East.

And then last but not least, we a few years ago had a grant, and we decided to diversify our fleet in finding smaller vehicles that we can put inside the neighborhoods.

If I think of neighborhoods, um Holly Grove, where the Leonidas bus may go rather than running a big vehicles through that route where there's low ridership, it makes more sense.

So we'll be looking at that as well.

And both the electrical vehicles and these eight smaller vehicles will be on the street by the end of this calendar year.

So let's talk about how we are looking at improving service.

Last year we launched a study in Algiers, and we know we've heard from the community both in Algiers and New Orleans East that the service is not what they want based on some recent changes that occurred a few years back.

So we have done a study in Algiers that it required extensive community engagements.

Our planners were riding the vehicles, our planners and community outreach were riding on buses, taking surveys.

We were putting QR codes so people can do the surveys.

We've done community meetings with the community to figure out what they want.

And one of the things, just as just an example of what we heard from them was we can't get to a grocery store timely and without two trips.

We can't buy ice cream, right?

Because it's gonna melt by the time we get home.

So in this new design, we have solved that problem because that was one of the highest highest concerns that the community said.

We wanted to get to the grocery stores timely.

We believe we solved that problem, we're bringing that plan, our board has to adopt that plan, and then we will be launching that plan in the fall of 2026.

Some of the lessons learned, and we are getting ready to launch a similar thing in New Orleans, similar study in New Orleans East.

And Councilman Hughes, I'd like to um my team is gonna be reaching out to schedule a meeting with you because one of the things we really learned is we need a project advisory committee for this.

And that project advisory committee will be representative of neighborhood associations, riders, business leaders, community leaders, and um just a diverse folks who are either champions of public transportation, economic development because we believe and economic mobility because we believe public transit is at the intersection of all of those things.

Umgiers, this plan will need to be resource neutral because we do have a fixed number of vehicles at the moment.

So the scope will include looking at the routes in New Orleans East that service New Orleans East, the 62, the 61, the 66, the 67, and the 68.

We anticipate this to be a similar to Algiers, a three-phase project where we listen to the community, gather what their needs are, take it back, do some technical analysis, propose some solutions, bring that back to the community, and then we have to bring it to our board for adopting adoption, and it's looking like right now this would be targeted for a fall of 2027 implementation.

So I mentioned this is a duplicate slide.

What I mentioned, um, the federal government is transitioning what they are funding, and we have taken a close look of that, look at that, the issues that they are prior, shifting their priorities to fund things that are particularly around public transit, family-friendly, safety, um, and innovation.

The grants we are eyeing to apply for in 2026 is the ferry grant, so that we can do a regional study that will provide a sustainable revenue stream for not only the Algiers Berry, but if we were to expand, because many of our community partners, Gretna has asked for us to service them, West Wego has asked for us to service them, and all of that takes a sustainable revenue stream.

As you guys are aware, there is no sustainable revenue stream for the Algiers ferry.

Once they took the toll tags off, there is no sustainable revenue stream for the Algiers Ferry.

So we have to find that short real quickly.

Additionally, the other grant we're eyeing in 2027 to apply for is bus and bus facility.

This will help us specifically around the issue of AVA compliance and building out the better shelter and bus stop design.

That campaign that was launched about a year ago with GNO Inc.

Uh, a community for better New Orleans ride and the RTA.

So let's talk a little bit about our capital program.

We are robustly moving forward with this capital program.

The Algiers Ferry Terminal Project, as you guys are aware, is under construction.

We are temporarily suspending service this week for the ferry due to the fact that we are doing some demolition work with the what used to be the old pedestrian bridge.

So we're in the process of demolishing that.

We anticipate being back in service this weekend, depending on the weather.

Over the next 90 days, we can anticipate pile driving and additional internal and external demolition on this this project.

This project is scheduled to complete by the end of December.

And then we'll re this this project also has a component that is our maintenance yard in Lower Algiers, and that will complete probably in April 27.

Downtown Transit Center.

Um this project is fully funded.

It's a partnership between the RTA and the city.

The city has the RTA is building the uh permanent uh transit center at the corner of canal and basin.

This center will, once it's built, the library will no longer be used as the transit hub.

This is the first time we'll have a place where our community can come in out of the elements and make their appropriate transfers.

It's in it's right there on the neutral ground.

We're in the process of procuring the architect.

Once we get the architect procured, there'll be a robust community engagement process for this project.

The city's responsibility is to do some of the pedestrian improvements from the um union passenger train uh terminal to the uh new downtown transit center.

Bus Rapid Transit, um, as you guys are aware, um, a few years back, you guys voted with our board and we submitted to the federal government what's called the locally preferred alternative, and it is the route by which the community and the uh with community input was selected for bus rapid transit to come from uh New Orleans East to downtown and then from downtown to the West Bank.

So we are in conversations with both DOTD and the Department of Public Works because we're trying to figure out what the technical standards for the bus rapid transit need to be and what the traffic studies say and all of the technical details.

Once we get those technical details lined out, we will do a robust community campaign and community outreach to talk about things like dedicated lanes.

I know Councilman Green, that's an issue for you on Gentility.

I'm sure it's gonna be an issue in New Orleans East.

I was just at a New Orleans East Matters conversation.

That community, particularly the New Orleans East Matters, was um integral in the feasibility study, and as I mentioned to them, we are not throwing out the feasibility study, we are building upon the feasibility study.

So look for a robust bus conversation about that.

On all of our projects, we will be coming to you guys to help us build out kind of a project advisory committee because of the volume of capital programs and the amount of community input.

We want to make sure we get a good mix of the right people to help us progress public transit.

Streetcar modernization is another one of those projects.

Um you may be aware, and based on recent emails that I've sent to you guys, um, we are required to do a streetcar modernization study.

That is by consent decree, and that needs to be whatever this study, whatever the recommendations and the outcomes needs to be adopted by our board by November of 2026.

This is an opportunity to mitigate safety risks that we often see.

The conversation about safety and motor vehicles, it happens every day on the St.

Charles Street car, not every day, but lot quite often on the St.

Charles Street Car, and many of our street cars, you know, some of us growing up would often try to race the streetcar.

And then how do we again look at increasing our ridership?

So this study internally, all the technical assessments began in December.

We're now ready to start rolling out the community conversations.

So again, I'll be looking and following up with you guys about who your community advisor should be as part of this.

This is an opportunity to really create public transit for all.

When we think about some of the we love our beautiful green street cars, but when we think about some of our accessibility issues and challenges, you know, a person who has hip issues may have a problem stepping up onto the streetcar.

If I'm bringing my groceries home off the streetcar, maybe a challenge if I'm using my cart, strollers.

Those are common everyday things that people elsewhere when they ride public transit may or may not have to deal with, but because of our beautiful green streetcars, it is potentially it is an obstruction.

And how do we create better streetcars for all?

And so that's what this study it will involve the whole streetcar network, not just St.

Charles, but the consent decree is specific to the St.

Charles line.

We're way way the I say completed.

We've completed the community engagement section of the accessibility study.

We are now waiting for the final results.

What we're hoping this study will allow us to do is truly create a system that either via the communications, and this was a lot of this is focused on communication tools.

So is our website appropriate and meet the all the ADA signage.

When we start to do audibles or real-time signage at stops, what should that look like to make sure both the folks who are neurodivergent, the folks who have hearing problems, the first folks who have vision problems, that all of them can be accommodated through the appropriate types of signage, even the language access.

So we are looking, we needed to do the study to figure out what the best practices were happening in other places so that we can bring that home to New Orleans.

And so look for future projects and future improvements once this study's complete.

We'll be rolling that into our annual and our strategic mobility plan.

So we have a fully funded grant that we have, and we are again right now, have a consultant on board helping us figure out what are the best practices across the country and what are the lessons learned from those places that have also recently implemented their technology.

But we're not just waiting for the study, we're making improvements right now.

We have seen via our app a dramatic increase in people who are going cashless as it relates to ticketing.

We've just even given our riders the opportunity to use PayPal to buy for, I'm sorry, cash up Cash App to buy their tickets.

So even the unbanked, we're trying to make uh away for them.

The beauty of this, and we will be bringing forth to our board at some point a fair capping, right?

So I just talked to a fair vendor earlier in the week, and places like San Francisco have if you are not a San Francisco resident, you might pay nine, ten dollars to ride the trolley.

But if you're a local, you pay the $2, right?

And so this will help us make sure we are able to serve the community that needs us the most by capping after they, you know, as an example.

And so this will help us make sure we um are able to serve the community that needs us the most by capping after they you know, as an example, a monthly pass may cost 45 dollars, but they take in need to take 60 trips after they pay their 40 dollars, they can still do the 60 trips because of because it's because of this capping, right?

Um so we're looking to put that in place here um in the next year or so.

This will also help us figure out our fares.

We have not raised fares since 1999, and so we've done our best to try to streamline and become efficient.

That's what a lot of the work has been done over the last five years trying to improve the technicality, but at some point we're gonna have to come back to the community to pay to do an increase on the fare, and that requires city council approval.

So we'll be working with you guys on that as well.

So I know there's always a conversation about shelters.

Um we needed to complete a transit stops inventory.

There was no inventory of the conditions of each stops.

So we may have stops without sidewalks among Champatoulas, definitely in New Orleans East, um, where there's stops that don't have a sidewalk.

Um stops, does a stop have a trash can, does the stop have a light?

Is it safe?

Does the stop have a shelter?

So once we have now, is the stop ADA compliant?

So now that we have this inventory, we can now build out a multi-year program to go get funding from the federal government with a level of prioritization.

The other thing that we have going on to build upon what's um the work that was done last summer, I believe, between um Ride, Community for a Better New Orleans, and the Gunough grant on what should a shelter look like, right?

So we have that.

We have a designer of record that we're going to be launching to help us design these new shelters.

Ideally, they are New Orleans shelters, they're New Orleans built shelters.

We can grow a small business to help us build these shelters as opposed to just buying them off the shelf from a manufacturer, national manufacturer, and it doesn't meet our conditions.

So I said all that to say this this inventory was real critical so that we can be successful in going and pursuing uh federal grants.

And as I mentioned earlier, this 2026 application, we will we will be pursuing grants to either help us solve the shelter problem, the ADAA problem that we have, or a combination of both space based on the stops.

We have been busy with workforce development entire inside the RTA.

So we have created um a leadership class.

We are on our third cohort, and this is a um diverse from a staffing perspective.

So I may have operators in with um administrative leaders talking about leadership and building leadership skills amongst the ranks.

Um this is a volunteer, they're committing their time.

Um it's a 10-week session, and what we've seen is this helps us break down the silos that existed in this agency for a very long time.

Um additionally, we've just um signed two union contracts.

We've signed our contract with our um ATU and ULU, so the largest union is ATU, they represent our operators, and we've signed a contract with them, and ULU represents our admin staff.

Um we are working with our third union, IBEW, to build out a strong apprenticeship program.

IBEW is our maintenance and mechanics, and if we think about our streetcar barn, and I just think about the age of our workforce, there's no real clear kind of pipeline, and we're working on that.

And then last but not least, we are working hard on training and upskilling leaders and throughout the staff around emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, customer service.

Um there are a lot of soft skills that we are working hard to resolve.

And I'll take any questions.

Thank you very much for your presentation, and I do again want to remind the public that the what you saw on the screen is available online, the search of New Orleans City Council agenda and then view agenda at this time.

We'll move to Councilmember Willard.

Thank you, Chairman Green.

Uh it's good to see you, Mr.

Giselle Banks, and thank you for the information, Miss Hankins.

Uh looks like ridership is going up on the bus routes at least.

Um I wanted to know what what performance metrics do you do you track.

I know you I know you look at on time performance.

Are there any other like key performance metrics that you're that you guys track to know if you're hitting the mark or if you're you're falling short?

Yes, we track on time performance, we track um service delivery, are we making service?

Are we uh making pull out every morning?

We track from on our maintenance teams um the time uh preventable maintenance on the vehicles, right?

We track um lots of safety safety statistics.

I can send you we we have um quite a few metrics that we track.

Okay, on these trips call outside.

So I think it was 76% on time performance in 2024.

Does that sound about right?

It sounds about right.

What would tells you if you're on time?

Is there like uh a window to where if you're within that window you're on time?

Yeah, two minutes early, six minutes late, and the the technology on our vehicles tells us that we're on time.

Okay.

Um heard from some people in the city of New Orleans who rely on public transit to get to work, uh, especially people coming from you know the the far ends of the city.

Um sometimes, you know, uh if a bus is late, uh they miss a connecting bus, and it could be um you know uh cause them to be late for their job, so there's an equity component because the far sides of the city are predominantly black, it's also an economic development issue.

So I wanted to know, and I you talked about the plans for New Orleans East and for Algiers.

Is there anything else that that you can like weigh in on to where we'll we may be able to reduce those those gaps in the near future?

So a couple of couple of things.

Every we change our schedules three times a year, and so what our planners do three times a year?

Three times a year.

So we do typically in January, typically in June, typically in September.

And um our planners during that time, while they're making tweaks, they're looking at the data to see if they need to adjust the schedules if we're actually meeting it.

Sometimes we have issues, you know, dedicated lanes.

I heard the conversation about the bike and the um bus.

The bus conflict.

If we can get transit priority, dedicated lanes, signalization, work close, and we are we are don't get me wrong, we are working closely with DPW, but if we can make that a priority, make transit a priority, then we believe we can solve some of these problems.

Bus Rapid Transit is one of those projects that um, if done right, can get move people from New Orleans East to downtown in 15 minutes as opposed to 30 to an hour, 45 minutes.

Uh have you talked about that?

I just wanted to know if you if you had spoken to DOTD about about some of that because you know, I know a lot of it is on on state highways.

We are in constant in conversation with Secretary Leday and his team.

When I mentioned about the bus rapid transit as a as a specifics, they are having those conversations right now.

And we're you know, it would be nice, and one of the things we've been working, think talking about with the Greater New Orleans Foundation is can we do a familiarization tour?

Can we go off and go see what Indianapolis has done with their BRT or what um uh South Carolina or Virginia have done with their BRT so that we can again take the good and bring it home?

Um thank you.

Uh Councilman uh Willard, I do wanted to add that um in the short term.

Um so Ms.

Hankins talked about um uh the eight smaller vehicles that we have um that we can use as kind of like circulators, and so um uh we could uh in the planning process, right?

Look at um those neighborhoods that you talked about that they um um there are possibly some inequities there and maybe run those circulators um in those neighborhoods in the short term because I know um BRT is a longer term goal um and we know we need solutions now.

So along with the um the changes on the routes, uh we could also add those circulators.

Is that something that y'all are considering doing right now?

Yeah, we're looking at that that now.

She reminded she was reminding me that we were looking at that now.

Okay.

The other thing is you know, this paratransit software that we have, um, once we implement it, make sure it is cost effective.

The other thing is, you know, this paratransit software that we have, um, once we implement it, make sure it is cost effective, we would then be able to do in some of these isolated areas some on demand where we can move them from their neighborhood to a more centralized transportation point um uh or a bus hub if it's so that to reduce the number of transfers.

Okay.

Uh we've also heard that sometimes communication can be an issue, line disruptions or or stuff like that.

Um sounds like sometimes there's a uh discommunication or communication not occurring with the operators and the riders.

Uh is that something that's on y'all's radar, and are y'all looking at any way to improve kind of timeliness of notifications and alerts?

Absolutely.

So we are working on um improving, we have an internal process that we've um been working on for about a year.

We've made some improvements.

We know we have to um make more improvements, and as a matter of fact, we're gonna be sitting with Ride and talking about some of the real-time updates and how we're doing it.

We do have some technology challenges that we're looking to overcome, but we have we have become better, and there's more work to do.

Okay.

Um keep us in the loop on that.

Yes, sir.

Um love hearing about the training, especially as it relates to soft skills.

Uh I push that for every age group.

It's it's something that you know goes a long way in our society.

Um last question, uh Algiers Ferry.

I know you you touched on that.

I think that was when I was coming back in.

When can um we expect the Algiers Ferry to be open again?

It should be open this weekend.

This weekend, yes.

Okay, all right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Willard.

Councilmember Hugh.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um good afternoon.

Thank you all for being here today.

Um I want to dig deeper into the community engagement with New Orleans East, and um, you know, happy to hear that you'll be engaging the community uh respectfully, uh RTA is probably uh more unpopular in District Eden and sewage and water board.

So what what walk me through more specifics of the plan to engage the residents of New Orleans East?

When will that work commence?

How robust, you know, walk me through the timeline.

So we're looking at April.

We want to get with you to make sure we have the right people on the advisory committee.

Um, and so we'll be scheduling that meeting as it relates to the the community outreach.

We will have um tables at key locations with our planners and our um uh uh community outreach team.

They will be help helping riders fill out surveys.

We will be uh doing meetings in neighborhoods, and we will have um meetings at the RTA both um central office, or we can do these meetings remotely.

Um, and we have a one of the things we did in Algiers that we're looking to do, we learned it late in the process is to do online recordings type webinars so that community who need to who may not be able to make it to the meeting can participate from their homes.

Yeah, well, I certainly look forward to um working with you all on this, and just as you're thinking about your planning, um, remember I have a very robust Vietnamese community.

Um, that we have to be intentional how we engage that community.

Um, and I have a swiftly growing Hispanic population uh in in District E as well.

Uh so we want to be intentional uh there.

Um I didn't hear anything about the Lower Ninth Ward, a community that feels forgotten.

So tell me any plans you have on the horizon for the Lower Ninth Ward.

So I'm glad you reminded me of that.

We have currently two the two buses lines that go through um the Lower Ninth Ward and go deep into uh St.

Bernard Parish as well.

And many of our Lower Ninth Ward folks um want to shop in St.

Bernard Parish.

So as we are um improving service elsewhere, right?

We the Lower Ninth Ward is one of those um areas that we have frequent service on with the St.

Claude bus as well as we may have to look at the frequency of the other bus, I'm sorry, the one that goes through Araby on that piece.

And so we look at that is something we we look at on a regular basis.

I have not heard a specific complaint.

The shelters, as we're talking about shelters in the ADA stops, the Lower Ninth Ward will definitely benefit from that as well.

Yeah.

And I'm so glad you, you know, you you mentioned you said that Lower Ninth Ward residents want to shop in St.

Bernard Parish.

I don't see what I'm saying.

I said because they want to, they probably have to I'm glad you said it, but how sad is that?

And shame on us as city leaders that they have to leave Orleans Parish to go to St.

Bernard Parish because they have no other options in the Lower Ninth Ward.

And that should be something that that should keep all of us up at night as city leaders.

I'm not putting that on you.

I'm preaching to myself first.

I I but but that's just shameful.

Yeah, we in New Orleans um the things that keep me up at night is how do I make sure I serve all New Orleans with the limited resources that I have.

Yeah, and and you know, as we continue to you know address problems in the city, we just have to be far more intentional about thinking about the Lower Ninth Ward from every angle, uh, every department, uh every elected official.

Let me um raise the alarm on reading Lake Forest as I always do.

Um, you know, we've we've talked a lot about pedestrian safety today today.

Yeah, and uh Madam CEO, um I'm sure you've seen it.

I see it on a daily basis, uh, madam chief strategy officer.

I'm sure you've seen it too.

But I mean, I literally see people darting through traffic trying to get from you know the the bus stop at the New Orleans East Hospital side to the library, and and I just I I I pray nobody gets struck, but it's it's dangerous.

So uh how are we coordinating with the city and relevant agencies to kind of address that?

I'm glad you were reminding me of that because one project that was not on this list is um we have funding to build transit hubs.

Right, and um we have funding to design all of them and and build at least two, and the one that is on our radar is the corner of Reed and Lake Forest.

Great.

Um I noticed you know from the from the community meeting that I attended the um building that is now used to be a storefront that is now abandoned.

Is it an opportunity?

Should we be having those conversations?

So came back from that community meeting, poked my team and said, should we be having this conversation with with with the building owner?

Is there an opportunity here, right, for that to be a transit location?

Um but so that is hot top of mind.

The other location, I think maybe in um Mr.

Green's area, it's the desire, Gentili Woods, not Schwagman's, um Walmart, Walmart and where the Wind Dixie was.

That exchange is just complicated.

So, how do we make sure we find a a decent solution for that so that we can improve the pedestrian issues?

Great.

And anyway, I can be a partner um in that.

Um please let me know.

Um I get asked um sometimes about uh parking ride.

I know growing up in New Orleans, these parking ride was was uh was pretty robust, uh, where many of our uh residents who worked downtown would literally park and ride.

Do do we still have parking rides or no no they don't exist.

Um I think it was when the city had more resources and could do uh express buses.

Um but there is an opportunity to do park and ride with BRT, right?

As we think about BRT, we will have to there other cities have it with BRT.

They at the anchors of many of the other cities BRT is transit-oriented development where housing work and play occurs um and um so there's plenty of opportunity to explore that through the BRT as we're improving the service in New Orleans East.

If there's an opportunity to do parking ride, well we don't own land in New Orleans East, unless the city has land that we can use.

We have a uh on the West Bank, we have an agreement with the city.

The city owns the property for the Algiers parking ride, and there's an agreement that the RTA maintains it until we figure out what what to do.

But there's no I don't it must have been just at the at the plaza and agreement at the Plaza shopping center how the parking ride happened.

Yeah, it was probably an agreement, and you know, it was branded and they had security on site, you know, during the day to monitor the cars, but obviously in New Orleans East, we have no shortage of land, so I think there are some opportunities um, you know, to be innovative there.

And then finally, one question that I get asked often that I don't have the answer to when I go to neighborhood association meetings is around trash cans uh at bus stops.

So is that something that RTA installs at bus stops, or tell me how does that work?

Typically the city.

Okay.

The trash cans that are black and city branded and have the open top, those are city.

Okay.

RTA, when asked, will have trash cans.

Um we have um in the last year or two, we form a bus stop maintenance crew.

That bus stop maintenance crew goes out and make sure um attempts to pick up the trash, right?

They'll do our trash if there's a problem, they'll work with the city.

And sometimes if it's just that bad, they'll just clean it up.

Yeah, that might be a you know an opportunity too where the city and RTA can put our heads together and figure out how we can partner um as we look to a bait litter uh throughout district B and certainly throughout our entire city.

We agree.

Um so let me just thank both of you uh for your work.

Please consider me a partner, and I definitely look forward to uh our engagement in district E.

Yep, my team knows that they they need to quickly schedule meetings so that we can talk details.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chairman.

Thank you, Councilmember Hughes, Councilmember Harris.

Hi, just quickly, how are you?

You know, I'm gonna ask about bus shelters, which you touched upon, but in district B, we need them everywhere.

Girttown, Central City, all the places I see these kids standing out in weather, especially on days like today where it pours down rain and they're trying to find shelter and they can't.

So, what is the timeline on rolling out these shelters?

So we have to get the grant first.

Okay.

The one that you keep asking about.

Yeah, one in front of the Mardi Gras Indian Council, right?

The problem with that shelter is there's not again it's the city, if we have to work quickly with DPW as well, um, because there's not enough room between the sidewalk and the street to put the shelter.

And so either we need to where where that occurs, we need to have the city change their street standard to do a bump out when they're doing their construction work.

Um I would love and to get to the point where a lot of other cities are with between the DPW and the public public transit, where DPW lays all the infrastructure and uh the ADA and all those things, and then the transit agency just plops the shelter down.

And that's that's what I think is what good government efficiency will look like.

Okay, exactly.

Right?

They got to get it done in the summer, and you see that level of efficiency happening.

Yeah, I mean you see it in other cities as well.

And look, we need to get all of our agencies together.

Um, there is a good opportunity for that at the river district, which is they're literally brand new streets that are uh transit-oriented.

So if you haven't reached out to Todd and that team on the infrastructure piece and where you might locate bus stops, I think now's a good time to do it before anything is really built there.

Yep, sure our team reaches out there.

But back to the Mardi Gras Indian Council um area.

I think they even were gonna donate the land in order to put like a uh a bus stop there.

Um so let's service that offline.

Okay.

Um I do want to ask about Mardi Gras and the impact of Mardi Gras on the streetcar lines.

My dear neighbor who I'm uh recommending to your advisory council takes the street car every day from uptown to downtown because their houses takes it back up.

But I know during Mardi Gras when all the Chads are out blocking everything, it's hard to get the street cars through.

So, how are you coordinating with the city in order to remove those barriers so that transit can happen?

So we communicate often with the city on specially dense, and so um with that specific example, particularly this year, the crowd had already happened.

And then I was asked to put resume service to to get rid of the crowd.

That's a set that was a safety safety issue.

So our team coordinates and participates in all the Mardi Gras coordinating, special events coordinating.

Um I think this is an issue.

I think we talked about, I think we talked about um uh more and better coordination with um enforcement.

Yeah, right.

And I think um that is probably step number one, even though we do uh have that coordination, I think probably more frequent um uh coordination on the enforcement side, earlier coordination every single day um to make sure that those tracks are not blocked.

I almost think that you need to work out with the NRPD to have an officer ride on the streetcar so that they can get off and tell these people to move because they're impeding normal traffic and transit that people rely upon to get to their jobs.

This is not like this is just for the tourists, this is real transportation that really gets people to where they need to go.

Yeah, and particularly since during that time they had there's more people, more enforcement folks.

So that's a great idea.

We'll we'll surface it.

That'd be great.

The other thing I want to talk about is um, especially in the bio district.

I know there's been discussion about how do we connect um RTA with Jefferson Parish and getting out to the hospitals and getting workers back and forth between the hospitals.

What is your plan right now for that coordination?

Is there any coordination happening specifically around bus passes and and making sure that Jefferson Parish can take our bus passes vice versa?

So the app right now, Jefferson Parish, we do share the technology for the um bus passes.

And there is a regional run.

One regional ride that currently exists.

Um we currently go out into Elmwood.

Right.

I just want to make there's there's this conversation that we're not regional, but we currently go into Elmwood.

That's the furthest the agency has ever gone.

Um, and we currently go to the airport, and we currently go to Nunes Community College.

We coordinate with Jefferson Parish um on a regular basis.

Our planners talk to their planners to make sure schedules are matching up.

Um as it relates to the bio districts.

We are in conversation with the bio district about some of the funds that they have and some of the improvements that they want to make.

And so we can definitely have a conversation um with the three of us to make sure whatever it is that they're asking for gets done.

Okay, that'd be great.

And again, I think that's just another matter of scheduling that conversation.

I know that the biodistrict in particular is looking at um smart shelters, having places where you can charge phones like other cities while you wait for a bus.

Um, and I think that's really important.

I also think that making sure that the shelters are eco-friendly and having solar if that's a possibility on some of them, so that people can utilize technology while they're waiting for the bus.

Yep.

I think one of the several of them have been solar.

The challenge is I know the theft.

The theft of the solar.

Yeah, well, that goes back to Councilmember Green and I are on top of these uh people who've taken scrap metal illegally.

Right.

So that's all the questions I have.

Thank you.

That's another example of why those people who are taking those products need to be more diligent.

They're hurting the city.

But okay, um, we have a comment called from Valerie Jefferson, and I want to say in advance, I appreciate your patience and time.

Um, and the airport representative, Mr.

Dolio, your patience and time.

I'm gonna reverse the agenda three months from now, so airport RTA, and we'll go from there.

But you all have been here since 10, or at least, you know, whatever time you arrive.

But the bottom line is that we start our agenda early.

So, but thank you very much for your patience and the public appreciates it too.

Ms.

Valerie Jefferson, two minutes.

Yes, uh uh thank you.

Good uh afternoon, everybody.

Uh I'm Valerie Jefferson.

I'm the chair of the Women of Action ATU Women Caucus.

Uh we are advocating for uh women that's in transit.

We are employees at RTA.

We have uh launched um a survey that's the riders and drivers relationship.

We also uh started a study in um air equity in transit, uh quality of air around transit in New Orleans, and we really appreciate it.

Thank you for your advice and your recommendation.

Uh I'm about to say Sister Harris, but uh City Councilman Harris, and also uh the chair of transportation.

Thank you for your support and uh also your uh commit commitment for quality air around transit.

We want to also thank the uh excuse me.

We also want to thank the uh mayor office, uh Deputy Mayor Renee LeBron, City Council, City Councilman Amy, Amy, City Councilman Jason, City Council Eugene, City Council Leslie, and also the LSU uh environment health department.

Please forgive me because the last name I get tongue-tied.

So it's easy for city.

I do respect everyone on the city council.

We also uh want to recognize the organizations and the coalition groups that's join us in this effort.

We still waited on, and I'm sure that she has us on her um uh her planning uh schedule uh our um main piece of this uh study, the RTA, our um Miss Hankins.

So we just want you all to know that we are here, and this study is about transit air quality around transit.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Uh I appreciate your comments.

And before we close, I want to thank the RTA for recognizing Mr.

Sawyer, the first black bus driver.

And um I want to thank Mr.

Patterson who actually wrote the article.

Um I think I'll say professionally.

Well, I'm gonna say thank you, writing the article, but um it's kind of reminds us of what we come through as a city, and um it also encourages us to recognize that a lot of progress has been made.

But um appreciate the RTA for doing that.

And once again, thank you for your patience and the presentation.

And once again, I'm being redundant about this.

I want to remind the public that everything you saw today is online.

Just go to City Council, go to agenda, view agenda, and you can click on to what you just saw.

Thank you.

I appreciate your work.

Thank you for having us.

Welcome.

Your next agenda item.

Councilmember Green is the um update on the projects and impacts of partial government shutdown on TSA employees at the Lily Armstrong, uh New Orleans International Airport.

You have Kevin Tellio and the Director of Aviation.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate you being here.

I just saw an article from someone who said that they went to the airport and they had a flight and got out with not much trouble.

So that's a whole lot different from the headline and pictures of last week.

So I know a lot of work went on behind the scenes that you'll tell us about.

Yes.

But um, Mr.

Dolial, if you could introduce who's with you at the table.

I appreciate that.

I will, and thank you uh for the invitation to come today.

Uh I have I'm Kevin Dolio, the Director of Aviation at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.

And I have with me today to my left uh is Aaron Burns, the deputy director for customer experience, marketing and communications.

Uh to my right next to me, Walter Krugowski is Deputy Director of Operations and Maintenance.

And uh to his right is Michelle Allenhardt, uh Deputy Director of Legal Affairs, our general counsel.

Uh I'm going to uh take you through I know the updates on uh construction projects and then the TSA situation.

I'm gonna take you quickly through some air service uh discussion too, just a couple slides, because I know air service comes up uh from time to time, and then move into the construction projects that are ongoing uh and then uh speak to the TSA situation.

Uh but first slide, just couldn't help uh myself but uh showing again uh the fact that for the fifth year in a row uh we've been uh selected or voted on as the uh or through surveys of of users of airports as the best airport in North America and in our category of airports, our our size of airports.

Uh and with that, we've also been inducted into the ACI World Director General's role of excellence.

Congratulations.

Uh so five years in a row North America, but the Director General's role of excellence is more of an international affair.

Uh we went in with five airports this year.

Only one of the others is a North American airport.

The others are from around the world.

Uh so we're we're uh in good company uh worldwide in terms of the uh the airport and the operation there.

And don't ever hesitate to bring the good news.

I insist that the good news be made part of the public record.

Okay, okay.

Great.

So here's a slide uh seeing I use and in presentations I give all the time, just to remind uh folks that we have a pretty large catchment area.

Uh an airport's catchment area is the the region that it draws uh its traffic from or its passengers from.

Uh our catch, we're we're the largest airport within 350 miles of us.

Uh and we draw from as far east as uh uh mobile, uh as far north as Jackson, Mississippi, and as far west as just about to Lake Charles, Louisiana, uh is our catchment area.

Uh anything in a three-mile, uh three-hour driving radius, we capture a lot of it.

Uh so we are, and if you're flying into or out of the state of Louisiana, 85% of you are using uh the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.

Uh air service uh over the past year, uh, even though uh last year was a year that where demand softened uh around the country.

Uh we saw a good bit of new air service uh added.

Uh this slide shows uh each carrier and the their additions of service.

Uh a significantly uh uh large uh increased service on the part of Breeze Airways.

You'll see there on that slide.

Spirit with their San Pedro Sula service was great service for this region.

As we know, Spirit is working its way through bankruptcy proceedings, and hopefully they merge on the other end as a still viable carrier and continue on.

South West has bumped service to several of their destinations out of here.

British Airways continues to do well on their London service, and they've increased the frequency on that service.

So just a number of things going on, even during a year in which demand softened around the country.

But we use a professional consulting firm that advises and works with airports around the country and air service development initiatives, and they they bring to us uh very helpful and and sometimes interesting information.

Uh and these next two slides I just had to share.

It's not numbers we made up.

This comes from Campbell Hill, uh, our air service development consultants over uh the process of doing their work.

Uh they compared us to uh our peer medium hub airports.

We're we're what's called uh classified as a medium hub airport and FAA classifications.

Uh this is 30 other airports.

Uh compared uh us uh to these uh this 30 airport population uh in terms of seats per capita, uh seats per pop year population uh and found that uh in seats per capita uh in our air service activities or the service we have, uh we have more seats per capita uh out of this market than any of the other 29 markets, uh our peer uh airports.

Uh the next slide uh compares us against other strong leisure destinations, kind of by real competition out there, right?

Uh and and this is a mix of large hub, medium hub, and small hub airports.

Uh and when comparing us to uh other leisure destinations, big tourism spots uh in the country.

We come in second to only Orlando, and who can beat Disney World?

Uh but we come in second only to Orlando and the seats per capita out of this market.

So we have very strong air service out of this market, and that's a testament to this market and the strength of it, uh, and that will continue.

We continue working hard to bring more air service to this market as I just indicated.

Our folks are off uh uh on an air service development uh trip right now.

Uh so it's an ongoing process, even though we're strong market, really good service.

Uh we still work to bring more service into the market.

Uh our capital projects.

There's uh several important projects ongoing right now that that we wanted to highlight today.

Uh the first being the Express Shuttle Connector Road.

That's the connector road we've talked about that uh connects our two campuses, uh the South Campus to the North Campus, uh, and will provide uh a route for all of our shuttle activity uh to use a dedicated roadway all on airport property, not touching public roadways, traffic signals, uh traffic uh on veterans and so forth, and have a consistent and really quick transit uh between our campuses for our shuttle buses.

Uh that's the rental car shuttles, uh the economy parking uh operation.

We still run on the south side of the airport.

Uh our employee parking is in a garage on the south side of the airport, and good report uh earlier today on rail.

Uh and when New Orleans Baton Rouge rail happens, passenger rail happens, there will be a stop at the airport, but it will be on the south side.

It will be across airline highway from the old terminal uh in this roadway will provide uh access uh for those passengers uh to transit around to the north terminal as well.

Uh so very critical project, moving along well, it's it's uh being done in two significant phases.

Uh phase one is doing the north half of the roadway, and that's really the half that we'll get the most benefit from.

So we'll get the benefit by the end of this year once the north half is online of our traffic coming off uh Veterans Highway and those traffic signals and so forth, and really using our all access road on the south side and then merging into this half that's done on the new connector road.

Uh so by the end of the year, we'll start seeing significant benefit from this project, and then by the end of next year, the south half uh of the roadway system will be completed as well.

Uh it's an 84, 85 million dollar project uh at federal grants to the tune of 65 million, uh, and then state grants uh for uh supporting local match and then our our self-generated funds uh or garb's uh revenue bond debt to finance the rest of it.

Uh next project uh we are constructing a couple uh uh overflow surface parking lots uh on the north side within walking distance of the terminal.

Uh those lots of the project was just bid out, uh it's just been awarded.

Contracts are running through the uh the contracting uh signing process now.

Uh so that company should be on board soon.

It's about a nine-month process to complete the project.

So by early 27, we expect to have uh those uh surface lots on hand uh and will provide uh another uh 380 spaces overall to our overall parking inventory near the terminal.

You say by early 27?

By early 27.

Completion, good.

All right, yeah, good.

It's uh next project, a very, very critical project, both from uh a safety perspective and capacity perspective is the uh uh runway 220, that's our east-west runway, uh keel rehabilitation.

Uh it's it's really a full-depth uh removal and replacement of the keel section of the runway, which is the center two panels of the runway.

That's the portion that takes the pounding all the time uh for the full length of the runway.

Uh it's uh it's very critical in that uh runways uh every so often, it's uh usually about a 20-year cycle uh while you you make repairs and rehab uh uh on an ongoing basis on runways.

Uh at 20-year cycles uh really drives the wear and tear where you go and do a more in-depth uh rehab to runways, and this one's undergoing that very significant rehab.

Uh it was taken down in March.

Uh the project started.

Uh it will run through the end of the year.

Uh we should have the runway and and it's tracking uh well on schedule uh at this point.

Uh the uh somewhat dry uh situation here, unusually dry situation here has helped.

Uh now we haven't lost time uh with rain uh days and so forth, but uh the project's tracking real well and expect it completed again by the end of the year.

We'll probably have that runway back up and operating in November.

The next project uh our check baggage inspection system expansion.

So this is the the CBIS that portion of our baggage system uh where our actual inline uh inspection equipment is the X-rays and the TSA personnel that man them and uh the identification and and maybe additional search of bags that have been checked at ticket counters float through this facility.

And uh the facility uh if if overwhelmed and during heavy periods can slow down and bog down the rest of the system.

Uh this project is increasing capacity uh in that facility, adding uh additional screening equipment, uh it well, another uh uh uh additional piece of screening screening equipment, the personnel that goes with it, the conveyors, uh it takes a bump out of the building to do it, so it's a pretty significant project, uh, but it will increase our capacity and throughput by 25% on the baggage handling system uh when this project is complete.

Uh next East Apron expansion uh program.

Uh this is really a uh bump out pretty significant expansion of uh of our overnight parking ramp uh for aircraft uh to position them in a way that will increase capacity on that that ramp to an extent, but also pull that parking uh further into an area that that allows an even safer and freer flow of traffic behind that facility and will accommodate uh down the road as we grow our facility, uh we'll accommodate the expansion eastward of our facility as well, the little expansion we can do to the east.

Uh the gate 8283 apron and drainage repair.

Uh we identified over time an area off the A con course where there was significant amount of ponding uh during rain events and so forth uh that we've gone in and corrected.

So the bulk of the projects done.

Uh we're just holding one piece uh uh of the project around an inlet uh that that borders uh an adjacent project for for another purpose.

And as that project gets to that general area, we'll go in and complete this last little piece of this project as well.

So it's essentially done with bar that small piece to do.

Uh so that's that's our uh projects that are ongoing, and I'll move over to uh just a brief update on the TSA situation.

Before I do, though, it's I think it's appropriate at this time uh to to mention we're planning to invite the uh, especially given I just updated on Capital Projects.

We're planning to invite the Transportation Committee if if you all can, and hope you hopefully you can uh out to the airport.

And there's two new uh council members on the committee.

I think it'd be very helpful for them, uh very eye-opening and helpful for you all uh as well.

Uh we'd like to invite you out, uh give you a more in-depth briefing of airport operations and and what goes on there, uh give you fuller understanding there, and and then a tour, and maybe take you through some of these uh projects, uh get you out onto the airfield, maybe into that runway project that's ongoing.

And so just a tour of our facilities and a briefing uh of the airport operation overall.

So hopefully that'll work out for you.

We'll be reaching out and uh and hopefully we can work a day to uh to get you out.

Okay.

I never know how this quorum thing works, but I think three of us at a time.

Yeah, okay, we have to do three and two.

Okay, okay.

Council Member Harrison and I would be in the first group.

We will come back to the okay.

And TSA.

Uh as you know, for uh gosh, the past what, six weeks, five weeks, uh it's it's been a pretty uh uh gosh, I don't know what to say chaotic, it hasn't been chaos, but uh it's been pretty very trying over the last several weeks uh with the partial government shutdown uh any impact on the TSA.

It is a very critical agency uh that wasn't funded, and uh their employees stopped uh receiving paychecks.

Uh once that occurred, uh the TSA uh call out uh percentage went sky high.

Uh and and we were impacted pretty heavily here.

Uh and uh we were we were in the upper end of uh of call out activity uh amongst airports around the country.

There was others as high.

Uh our impact though, uh, while uh many airports around the country, it was every day.

Uh our big impact was on Sundays and Mondays uh through the situation.

Uh the lines you saw to the garage uh on on a couple Sundays uh and uh you know for two Sundays in a row, it was pretty pretty difficult.

And uh the lines went through or into the garage on one particular Sunday all day.

Uh starting about five in the morning and probably running till about five that evening, uh we we were very well backed up to the garage.

Uh Mondays for the most part, we took the heavy hit uh for the first half of the day, and it would calm and settle uh and be more normal uh later in the day.

But but the two Sundays in particular, it was just an all-day event.

Rest of the week, uh pretty normal.

Even with the heavy call out, uh there are lighter uh uh lighter bookings uh Tuesdays through uh through Saturdays.

Uh and so even with the significant call out, uh the TSA was in better position uh to handle the throughput of traffic, and uh so we weren't impacted beyond uh our normal uh wait times on those days.

So fast forward uh to Monday of this week, uh TSA uh employees all received uh back pay checks.

So they've been caught up.

Uh they've been caught up through uh executive action uh on the part of the president not being affected.

Uh so it's done uh uh call out times uh uh uh kind of quickly gone back to close to normal.

Uh in fact, uh TSA expects uh uh good staffing through this weekend, uh so we shouldn't see the scenarios uh we had seen previously.

Uh we're back in the mode uh going into this weekend of of recommending our normal recommendation of arriving at the airport two hours ahead of time.

Uh so we've kind of marked back into that.

We're back into a more normal mode, uh, but that funding uh that uh took care of all of the back pay issues uh isn't clear going forward uh how they'll be paid going forward.

Hopefully it continues, but I did get word, uh we did get word out of uh an industry source uh communicating, I guess, with the industry yesterday, late afternoon, uh, that there is uh a movement uh in in uh Congress uh where uh seems to be some agreement moving forward uh between the House and Senate uh uh ongoing funding for DHS.

Department of Homeland Security, that will take care of TSA, FEMA, other agencies and so forth.

And even though Congress is on recess, uh there's potentially a way to get it moved and done uh quickly.

So hopefully uh that moves as um as the initial report indicates, the real potentials there for it.

Uh so of course we'll be monitoring very closely and and hope that moves through to uh to a successful uh resolution.

Um with that, I don't think I've missed anything.

That's essentially the situation with TSA, the impact it had locally, and of course uh we were in the mix with the rest of the nation and very significant impact in airports.

Thank you very much for sharing that information.

Actually, I should almost keep you all at the end of the meeting so you end us with all of this good news.

Maybe I'll tell you to come at 12 and close it out.

But the bottom line is I want to take.

I do want to ask you one question relative to regional cooperation.

It was good to see as we talked about the um master plan that there's regional support for it.

Could you talk about your relationships, the relationship between Jefferson Paris, Kenner, for example, New Orleans, St.

Charles, because a lot of people don't know that that cooperation has to exist for some of this work to be done.

It has and has for some time, and you're absolutely right, particularly with with the city of Kenner.

We're located in in the city of Kenner and with St.

Charles Parish.

Uh both uh Kenner and St.

Charles have a seat uh on our board, and that goes back uh gosh, 20, 30 years.

Uh but more recently uh as we work to continue developing the airport, uh, of course they have a voice on the board, uh, but we also interact uh on a regular basis uh with with Kenner uh and St.

Charles Parish have a really good uh working relationship uh with the mayor of Kenner and his staff, uh and there's no hesitancy uh between us or them in communicating a concern or or even a good uh update uh back and forth between uh between our offices.

So that's ongoing, and they're of course involved along with Jefferson Parish in any significant development at the airport.

We uh coordinate our activities with them.

Uh St.

Charles Parish, uh I brief on a regular basis.

That's uh standard uh standing briefings to uh so their console twice a year.

Once a year.

Once a year, uh, which has been in place for uh for a number of years.

Uh so I'll go down and and fully update their console on on the goings on at the airport, uh, what's happened over the past year, what's planned going forward, uh, and of course that regular real-time uh communication uh through their representation on the board.

Uh and again, a good relationship uh with them and the president Parish President's office and their staff, and there's no hesitancy there in communicating back and forth.

So I think it's it's been uh a really good relationship.

Uh we do communicate uh and part and significant issues, uh and uh and and particularly uh if we're gonna go to the airport.

Our master planning process, uh, and I didn't touch the master plan.

Uh a quick update there is essentially you you guys saw the last real update, and the current update is it's with the FAA now.

Uh is air reviewing it for their final approval.

Uh but in the master plan, and even our consultants commented, uh uh master plan is a very prescribed process.

Uh there's certain steps you have to go through, there's certain things you have to do, and you have to set up uh a couple committees.

Uh one, the community advisory committee, which involves uh all of your stakeholders locally, uh elected officials, uh neighborhood associations, uh local chambers, uh everybody.

And the technical advisory committee or the airport stakeholders, the airlines, the cargo operators and so forth.

We uh made it a point.

We were very intentional uh when we established the community advisory committee to cast a wide net, and we were very broad in our invitations to entities in Jefferson, St.

Charles in New Orleans uh for participation uh on that committee, very broad.

And to uh and to that point, the consultants even commented uh that they were very impressed uh with how the size and the the uh and how broad we establish the committee, it was beyond what they typically see.

Well, I'm pleased to be represented on the community advisory committee and appreciate the fact that we have um reached out to the surrounding community.

So um Councilmember Harris, any question?

Any new airport lounges in the works.

We um there is as we as we grow the facility, um there is there will be a need to expand.

Uh certain the common Yeah, I'm sick of waiting and and waiting for a spot at the current lounge.

We we are and we're looking for ways actually to be a little bit creative and allowing for more space in uh in a couple of the lounges.

One one air carrier's lounge and in our uh our common lounge.

Okay.

All right, we won't see that lounge happen soon.

All right, well, thank you all for um being here today.

Again, thank you for your patience.

I can't emphasize that enough, but beyond your patience, thank you for the outstanding contribution that you all make and the Louis Armstrong International Airport makes to the entire region.

And um congratulations on those successes, and let's continue that.

Let us know how we can help, and I look forward to the tour.

Um I look forward to going behind the scenes and seeing some of the things that I just think are happening, but I like to see them happening.

You know?

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Mary, all that you all do.

All right.

All right.

All right, see you later.

Okay, sir.

One hole, maybe.

Of the airport.

Sure.