The 35 venerable Perley Thomas Car Co. streetcars used on St. Charles Avenue survived Hurricane Katrina because they were stored on high ground inside the RTA's Willow Street facility. The faded green cars are being used on the Canal and Riverfront lines to replace temporarily the newer, red street cars destroyed in the flood.

Basha said the St. Charles line -- historically the RTA's busiest route with more than 3.5 million boardings a year -- was long overdue for rehabilitation even before the August 2005 storm.

Coincidentally, the agency had planned to launch an end-to-end replacement of the electrical system that drives the streetcars on Sept. 6, 2005, about a week after Katrina shut down public transit in New Orleans for more than two months and forced the RTA staff to relocate temporarily to Baton Rouge.

The damage caused by the hurricane, however, transformed what would have been an inconvenience into a service shutdown.

Instead of closing the streetcar line one section at a time to replace overhead wires, the RTA now must install an entirely new network to supplant the one ripped apart by high winds and fallen tree limbs.

Substation ruined

Further complicating matters was the destruction of the electrical substation that supplies the juice to move the streetcars, as well as the heavy cables that relay the current. The now-defunct station is on Upperline Street, near the midpoint of the St. Charles Avenue stretch of the line.

The loss of that facility left the RTA with no way to get power to the streetcar line, Basha said.