New Orleans Canal Bus Line www.streetcarmike.com Created December 25, 2004 and updated September 28, 2005. ©2004-2005 Michael Strauch. MEMORIES: My conscious memory is of the buses that replaced the streetcar line on May 31, 1964. New Orleans Public Service began the Canal-Lake Vista via Canal Blvd. and Canal-Lakeshore via Pont. Blvd. lines that day. Six-day-per-week Canal-Cemeteries and peak-only routes Express 80-Lake Vista via Canal Blvd. and Express 81-Lakeshore via Pont. Blvd. started up the next day. All five routes ran on the paved neutral ground right-of-way formerly used by Canal streetcars. There was a bus stop in almost every block from North Peters to North Rampart. This setup, with the only changes being new vehicles (all types of new look and advanced design buses owned by NOPSI and RTA ran the Canal lines, including Carpenters on the expresses) and route enumerations by RTA circa 1989 (40 Lakeshore Express, 41 Canal-Lakeshore, 42 Canal-Cemeteries, 43 Canal-Lake Vista, and 44 Lake Vista Express), operated until Mardi Gras 1997. When Lent began, RTA installed tracks to connect Riverfront and St. Charles for carbarn access. Canal buses would lay over in the three-track area at the foot of Canal during the streetcar shuttle of the early '00s. The trunk portion of the Canal bus line was replaced by 42 Canal-Cemeteries and 45 Canal-City Park streetcar lines on May 18, 2004. Local routes 41 and 43 became feeders to the 42 streetcar, and express lines 40 and 44 continued service to the Central Business District. Service was suspended with Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. BUS PICTURES: Typical seventies representation of NOPSI buses in the Canal Street neutral ground busway. GM number 271 is on the Canal-Cemeteries line in front of D.H. Holmes, so this would be Canal and Dauphine. From the 1974 NOPSI map. Aaron Handy III sent me this scan of the original Safti-Sighter mirror used when buses exited the neutral ground to reenter regular Canal Street traffic. Later mirrors were rounded. Buses also had signal-protected entry to the street. Locals would go to the right lane, while expresses used the center lane. Grumman Flxible number 758L on a local Lake Vista run between 1981 and 1983. M-A-N Americana 862 on the 42 Canal-Cemeteries line in the early 1990s. On February 19, 1996 I photographed New Flyer D40 number 94058 on RTA route 42 Canal-Cemeteries. This apppears to be Canal and North/South Villere. Orion 97294 at the foot of Canal Street in March 1997. Orion 98420 at the Cemeteries layover on November 26, 2001. From Edward Branley at CanalStreetCar.com comes this picture of Orion 97346, the last regular service Canal bus, meeting streetcar 2004 at Canal and City Park Avenue (the Cemeteries) about four in the morning on April 18, 2004. ROUTE MAPS: Copied from the RTA website, here is the final routes 41-42-43 map from the winter of 2004. Next to that is the new 42-45 streetcar map. LINKS: For a complete treatment of Canal Street's railway transportation over the decades, visit H. George Friedman's site "Canal Street: A Street Railway Spectacular." Edward J. Branley covers the new service on "CanalStreetCar.com." www.streetcarmike.com -- Strauchy Goodness in Every Byte!