How the Streetcar Shaped Post-Katrina New Orleans

At the time of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was arguably home to the most robust streetcar system in the United States. Its three lines not only traversed the central business district but extended out into additional urban neighborhoods, with the St. Charles Avenue line representing the country's oldest in continual operation. Streetcars were the only form of rail transit in the city, and the only transit mode that officials said they would rebuild in full after the storm.

For all its devastation, Katrina also presented urban scholars the rare chance to study city growth during a rebuilding process. Transportation policy experts Andrew Guthrie and Yingling Fan of the University of Minnesota used this unfortunate opportunity to evaluate the streetcar's impact on redevelopment in New Orleans. In the Journal of Planning Education and Research, they report that the streetcar did attract commercial developers, but might have displaced residential ones in the process: