Baton Rouge’s transportation woes are well-documented, and they won’t be fixed by the proposed $170 million tram connecting downtown and LSU. So why should a city with barely adequate public transportation focus on a fancy streetcar on Nicholson Drive?
“Do you want economic development?” says William Daniel, chief administrative officer for East Baton Rouge Parish. “Do you want half of that economic development paid for by the federal government? Well, this is the project.”
Promoting development along the Nicholson corridor is a goal of FuturEBR, the master plan approved unanimously by the Metro Council in 2011. A streetcar or tram (the terms are interchangeable) is part of that vision.
Daniel says the project—which will start at North and Fourth streets downtown and continue to North Stadium and Nicholson drives near Tiger Stadium—will create jobs, improve walkability, appeal to young professionals and bring investment to an area that needs it, while making sure none of the current residents are displaced.
“It will stabilize all those neighborhoods between Highland and Nicholson,” Daniel says, referring to the mostly low-income area between downtown and LSU commonly known as Old South Baton Rouge. “We don’t want to cause gentrification issues, so we are working on a land-use plan so that it won’t affect the residents, but it will certainly increase the property values.”
Metro Councilwoman Tara Wicker, whose district includes the entire tram route, sees it as a needed transit link, an economic driver and a tourist attraction. It would connect Old South neighborhoods with downtown amenities such as the Matherne’s grocery store and the new downtown library, she notes.
Local officials recently visited Kansas City to check out its new $102 million streetcar line, which spans about two miles across the length of the city’s downtown. Since it opened in May, the Kansas City tram’s average daily ridership has been about 6,800, besting an early projection of about 2,700 daily rides, says Kansas City Streetcar Authority spokeswoman Donna Mandelbaum.
While the authority hasn’t yet conducted a formal survey to see who’s riding and why, ridership tends to spike on Saturdays, which suggests many visits to downtown bars and restaurants. Downtown residents, workers and students also are likely in the mix, Mandelbaum says.
Rides on the Kansas City streetcar are free. A one-cent sales tax and a property assessment collected in a narrow transportation district paid for most of the construction cost and continues to fund operations. So the business and property owners who benefit most from the streetcar, not the city’s other taxpayers, pay the fare. Baton Rouge plans to take the same approach to its local match.
But there won’t be a local tram without federal money. The city-parish has applied for an $85 million Small Starts grant, which it hopes the Federal Transit Administration will recommend for inclusion in the president’s budget before the end of the year.
“We feel pretty good about FTA’s initial response [to the pending application],” Daniel says.
Rep. Garret Graves, Baton Rouge’s Republican Congressman who serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee, has not taken a position for or against the project, telling 225 as of mid-September that he hadn’t yet seen enough information about the project’s costs and benefits to know if he could support it. But after a meeting between Graves and city-parish officials, Graves says the feds find the project worthwhile.
It’s important to keep in mind that this grant program is only for transit projects, such as streetcars, light rail and bus rapid transit, that cost less than $300 million. So it’s not like the city-parish could instead use the money to, say, widen Interstate 10 or repave Government Street.
When FuturEBR was first unveiled, says Together Baton Rouge spokesman Broderick Bagert, the idea of a shiny tram was “ludicrous,” given the sorry state of the basic bus system. But now that CATS has a dedicated funding stream, he says it’s more appropriate to consider new types of transit.
Yet Together Baton Rouge has not taken an official position on the tram project. Bagert says the organization would be concerned if they thought it would divert funds or attention from basic transit, but he hasn’t seen any indication that it would.
“There is a tension between the flashy projects that urban planners get excited about and the non-sexy systems that get people to work,” Bagert says. “We would just want to make sure that this is something that continues to strengthen the system as a whole, not something that takes resources away from it.”
While the FTA’s decision is based on factors like economic benefit, congestion relief and cost-effectiveness, support from the local delegation never hurts. Graves says he hasn’t seen many other transit projects asking for federal dollars that make much sense, and he’d rather Louisiana get the money than some other state.
Graves says connecting downtown, the Nicholson corridor and LSU would be a good thing.
“I love the idea of finding ways to pull them together,” he says. “Is a tram project the best way of doing that versus other options? I don’t know the answer to that.”
If the grant is approved, detailed design work could begin next year. Construction could start by late 2018, with service beginning by the middle of 2021, according to the official project timeline. Right now, project planners expect to charge a $1 fare, although the city-parish might decide not to charge a fee at first to spur interest. If successful, similar projects might be considered in other parts of the city.
“This would be the first phase of the tram program,” Daniel says. “We would then be looking [to see], where would we take it next?”
BASICS ON THE TRAM
You are, of course, familiar with the quaint, historic streetcars of New Orleans and San Francisco. If built, TramLinkBR, or whatever they end up calling it, won’t be anything like that.
Instead, it’ll be sleek and modern, according to preliminary design plans, composed of a single car with three connected modules. Average speed, including stops, would be 8-10 miles per hour; top travel speed would be 25-35 mph.
The tram would run between downtown and LSU, but it would never turn around. It can be driven from either end, so the driver just moves from one end to the other accordingly.
It would ride with Nicholson Drive traffic. It hasn’t been decided whether the track would be in the outside or the inside lane, so it’s not clear whether the stations will be on the curb or in the median. The tree canopy will need to be trimmed, but no one wants to cut down a live oak, so the trees may end up dictating where the tram is placed. TramLinkBR.com
This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of 225 Magazine.
