[PRCo]

Mon Nov 28 19:37:21 EST 2005

 From Fred Schneider
I have seen so many things today on New Orleans ....

The first was in U. S. A. Today on the opening of the first public  
school in the city of New Orleans, with only 20 children.   Years ago  
I used to use school enrollment data as a reasonably good way to  
estimate a total population, in that case Puerto Ricans for an  
intercensal period .. and it worked.   But this simply isn't  
working ... everything is so totally out of balance.   I also read of  
20 charter schools in an attempt to improve school quality but they  
aren't telling us how many people.    No matter what numbers I get, I  
imagine small numbers for the city.   Instead of 1 million  
people .... what are we talking today?   30,000?    50,000?

There was another piece in today in one of the papers I read ... I  
think it was U. S A Today but it may have been in the Pittsburgh Post  
Gazette.   It was about allocating public money for public housing of  
poor people, and the pros and cons that go with pushing people  
dislocated by Katrina ahead of locals already on waiting lists for  
public housings.   Some of the numbers for people displaced by  
Katrina were impressive.   New Orleans wasn't mentioned.  Only  
Katrina.   It could have been Gulfport or Biloxi or Pass Christian or  
Slidell or New Orleans ... but still.   Fairfax County, Virginia had  
115.   Portland, Oregon had 80.   I know of about 10 here in little  
Lancaster, Pennsylvania.   Each one of you probably can add some  
numbers from your own AND FRED WOULD LIKE TO HEAR THOSE NUMBERS.   I  
was a labor statistician for more than 30 years.   I worked with  
population data.   I'm really curious.   We've never had this kind of  
an event.   I'm not convince we'll know for sure what happened until  
the 2010 census is published, but I am curious to know what the other  
papers around the country are showing.

Below the row of plus signs is a piece from the Baltimore Sun  
reproduced in the Chicago Tribune regarding the trolleys in New  
Orleans.  I guess my next question is (and it is rhetoric), if we  
only have 30,000 people living there, can we spend $30 million to  
restore the trolleys?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 
++++++++++++++

ï¿¼

ï¿¼

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/bal-te.nat20nov20,1,5495752.story
 From the Baltimore Sun

Katrina sidetracks streetcars

No estimated return time given to put New Orleans line back in service

ï¿¼
Associated Press

November 20, 2005

NEW ORLEANS // The clacking old streetcars that traveled up and down  
St. Charles Avenue for the past 170 years and their shiny new red  
counterparts on Canal Street will be out of service for months, maybe  
a year or more, because of Hurricane Katrina.

All 24 of the new cars for the recently completed Canal Street line  
and six of the seven cars on the shorter Riverfront line were  
destroyed by the flooding that followed Katrina. The antique St.  
Charles line cars were safe, but the power system that propels them  
was wrecked and must be rebuilt.

"We took a major hit," said Rosalind Blanco Cook, Regional Transit  
Authority spokeswoman. "We don't really have an estimate for bringing  
the lines back."

The St. Charles streetcar line - the oldest continuously operating  
streetcar line in the world - is on the National Register of Historic  
Places and one of the city's most familiar features. Streetcars  
traveling past mansions, universities and parks offer tourists a  
taste of the city's past and give residents a reliable commute for  
$1.25.

The Riverfront line was added in 1988, and the Canal Street line was  
restored last spring, 40 years after it was abandoned.

The RTA maintains the St. Charles cars. The new cars were built by  
the agency under the supervision of Elmer von Dullen, an expert in  
streetcar construction and maintenance.

The old streetcars were parked in the Uptown barn and escaped  
unscathed, but the new cars had been taken to the Canal Street barn.

"That's where we all evacuated to as well," Cook said. "We thought it  
was safe, and it was until the flood."

The building took in five feet of water.

"It was really sad," von Dullen said. "It was very corrosive. All the  
metal rusted. Even the plastic had white bubbles. If you had a shiny  
piece of plastic, it blistered the surface."

Unlike the St. Charles cars, the new cars are operated by computer  
and are air-conditioned and handicapped-accessible. It took 142 days  
to build each car, von Dullen said, and it will probably take that  
long to rebuild them.

"We're going to have to have all the undercarriages replaced," he  
said. "We'll have to go in there and tear out all the old wiring, rip  
out the paneling, rip floor out, treat for corrosion. Then we have to  
put the wiring and flooring back. Then the seats and interior  
paneling. It's almost like building new ones."