We’re excited about the City’s new proposals to pedestrianize the French Quarter, and we want to ensure that these improvements also include protections for people biking.
This past week the City of New Orleans shared their plans to significantly expand areas for walking and outdoor dining in the French Quarter. The plan proposes several different ways to reimagine French Quarter streets in order to put the movement and personal space of people first. At Bike Easy, we applaud the kind of bold thinking our struggling businesses, artists and musicians desperately need in this moment of crisis.
We’re also stepping forward to ensure that pedestrianizing the Quarter also means safe travel for people biking both to and through the Quarter. The French Quarter is a central hub for people biking in New Orleans, both as a connection point and of course as a destination and job center.
The Lafitte Greenway leads right into Louis Armstrong Park, and soon to be built protected bike lanes on Elysian Fields will guide people to the French Market. We need to ensure that these changes include protected routes for people biking, especially on connecting corridors like Rampart and Decatur.
As a member of the New Orleans Complete Streets Coalition, a coalition of 27 local organizations committed to making New Orleans streets safe, accessible, and sustainable for all people regardless of how they travel — by car, by bike, by bus, by wheelchair, or by foot — we’re excited about the opportunities this effort provides to the residents, businesses, and artists who call the Quarter and New Orleans home. We also want to thank Mayor Cantrell and Councilmember Kristin Palmer for thinking big and acting boldly for our future.
Of course, big plans for historic locations are bound to be met with many questions about exactly what change would mean. Now’s the time for those questions, and as a New Orleans resident, you know best what the right questions are.
Click here to review Mayor Cantrell’s plan to pedestrianize the French Quarter
You might be thinking, ‘Why this? Why now?’
Besides the fact that New Orleans year after year ranks among the deadlier American cities to walk or bike, we are now amidst historic public health and economic crises. Our local restaurants, music venues, and the city’s hospitality industry are hanging on by a thread. It’s going to take dramatic intervention just to keep the lights on.
Reimagining and quickly acting to create safe environments are imperative to saving jobs, careers, entire industries, and, most critically, the culture that sustains them.
Last week, members of the New Orleans Complete Streets Coalition joined leaders of various French Quarter groups on a walking tour of the City’s proposed changes. To be sure, there was concern expressed regarding the feasibility of some interventions, but there was also much agreement and enthusiasm for the project’s goals, and for many of the proposed solutions, including:
- Expanding walkways and repaired sidewalks outfitted to be ADA compliant
- Parklets outside restaurants and venues for dining and entertainment
- Slowing down local car traffic
- Safe connections for people biking to and through the Quarter
- Shutting off entertainment corridors to automobiles during certain hours
- Possible shuttle service to bring workers and visitors to destinations from adjacent parking lots
All of these changes would reduce traffic, add space for people to move safely and businesses to operate and entertainers to perform.
If we join together with goodwill and determined leadership, we can preserve the character and culture of New Orleans’ historic center, while reclaiming much of it’s public space to the free, safe, accessible movement of it’s people, and save our cultural economy in the process.
