New Orleans Planning Bus Service Improvements, Pending Budget Surplus

"New Orleans Regional Transit Authority officials are aiming to improve bus service and expand connections into surrounding parishes with a $119 million operating budget for 2019, even as they prepare for a major shift in the relationship between the agency and its primary contractor," reports Jessica Williams.

The already approved operating budget would achieve bus service improvements by adding buses to busy lines, adding new bus shelters and extending the 84-Galvez Street line into St. Bernard Parish.

But there's a catch:

[M]ost of the proposed endeavors are dependent on a funding surplus. And at the moment, officials still haven't accounted for the potential costs of two of the most critical and closely watched projects the agency is undertaking: upgrading its ferry fleet and last year's decision to return management of the sprawling transit agency to in-house staff instead of Transdev, the company that for many years has actually operated the RTA's buses, streetcars and ferries.

Williams includes a lot more detail about the system's funding situation, and what it will take to allow the full funding options a reality.