Y2K? We will probably never know.

Streetcars stranded on tracks for day

Cause of outage undetermined Pam Radtke Russell Staff writer

The St. Charles Avenue streetcars stopped running for almost 12 hours as an unidentified problem kept the cars stalled in their tracks all day Sunday.

Entergy crews installed a temporary cable to get the streetcars running again but could not find what caused the cars to stop at 5 a.m.

An Entergy spokesman said the outage was not an Entergy problem, but was in the Regional Transit Authority's system.

"Electricity was delivered to the RTA system," said Chanel LaGarde, an Entergy spokesman. To bypass the problem, Entergy crews ran a temporary cable at the problem spot, at the intersection of Upperline Street and St. Charles. The cars were working again at 4:30 p.m., he said.

RTA could not be reached for comment.

LaGarde said Entergy crews looked for obvious causes, such as fallen lines or tree limbs, but the cause of the problem was unclear.

"We will continue to search for a cause tomorrow," LaGarde said.

Entergy contracts with RTA to repair and maintain the power lines serving the streetcars on an as-needed basis. RTA owns the lines.

Passengers were moved by bus down St. Charles from Canal Street and along South Carrollton Avenue to Claiborne Avenue during the outage.

A downed cable line stopped the streetcar from running for about 2 1/2 hours Dec. 28. RTA blamed that problem on Entergy.

In the past, Entergy and RTA have disagreed over who owns the electrical system that serves the streetcar line. Entergy New Orleans is the successor company to New Orleans Public Service Inc., which operated the city's streetcars and buses until the RTA took over in 1983

01/17/0

http://www.nola.com/t-p/archives/index.ssf?/t-p/metro/0001170052.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 26, 2000

Answers

Thanks, Martin! So the RTA was receiving electric power and the problem seems to lie within their system, not Entergy's... That's a help. I'll watch for further updates.

-- Lee Maloney (leemaloney@hotmail.com), January 26, 2000.