Is Bourbon Street closed to traffic? Eben Brown explains

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Alabama's Morning News. I'm JT. Evan round our Fox Corse,
finally joining us now. I've been following a story and
what may happen at Bourbon Street in New Orleans. A
lot of discussion about the safety there for sure, after
that latest deadly attack with that truck. Evan, welcome in,
Thanks for being here.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
You know, I've been to Bourbon Street a number of
times over the years. I like New Orleans to visit.
Don't necessarily want to live there, but the restaurants are fun.
Bourbon Street in my earlier years a kind of fun.
I remember leaving Bourbon Street with a few people one
time and the hotel was diagonal from where we were.
Instead of walking down Bourbon Street and cutting ninety degree

(00:38):
up the next street, I thought, well, you just cut
across the back street there. We're not one hundred feet
into that side street, and all of a sudden, from
both sides of the street, nefarious looking hoodlums if you will,
start walking out to the middle of the street. And
I'm like, let's turn around and go back. And I
got to the cop on his horse there on Bourbon Street.
I said, did you see that? He goes, yeah, stay

(00:59):
on the main road. It's not a good idea. I'm like, WHOA.
So now you couple that with some other incidents like
the big truck attack. Bourbon Street's a bit of a
dangerous area if you're not careful, and now that crowd's there,
I got to tell you, I think this may be
a good idea. Where are we in the process of
blocking it off to traffic?

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Well, yeah, this is a report prepared by a security
consulting firm that was hired if you will buy, a
nonprofit group of police advocacy group, and the suggestion is
is that they close Bourbon Street off to vehicular traffic
from if you're familiar with the French Quarter at all,
from Canal Street on the south to Dauphine, which is

(01:40):
I want to say a majority of the way through
the through the quarter, but not the whole stretch of
Bourbon Street through the Burburbon Street goes beyond the Quarter.
But if you know, the main area where the restaurants
and the bars and the nightlife and everything is is
pretty much from Canal the Daulphine, and they recommend not

(02:02):
allowing any traffic vehicular traffic on it at all at
any time.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Of the day.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Right now, it's open to traffic during the day, it's
closed off to through traffic at night, with allowances to cross,
you know, cross traffic from the cross streets. They can
cross the intersection, they can't just they just can't turn
on the Bourbon Street. The suggestion, and this having to
do is a reaction to the terror attack on New
Year's Day, to not allow vehicles to get even close there.

(02:29):
And that would mean so if you're cross if you're
closing that off even to cross traffic, you have to
close those cross streets a block back from from Bourbon
Street in either direction because you don't want trucks to
get or cars to get close and you don't want
them to get stuck. Plus you have to allow for
some kind of local delivery access too, because otherwise, you know,
how are these businesses going to function. So that's the plan,

(02:50):
or that's the idea, but the city council is not
too keen on it. They say they have to discuss it.
The Mayor has not exactly been very warm towards it.
The reason being is that the French Quarter is not
just simply a party spot. It's actually a very vibrant
part of New Orleans where people live and work and
have businesses and everything, and this would be a major interruption.
And then of course there's the cost of implementing all

(03:11):
of this, which people may not want to pay for.
So that's that. How far this goes further from here,
we don't know. The city Council has promised to discuss
it and review it, but this is not something that
would be decided in days or weeks.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
You know, you talk about those cross streets Ivan, and
that's a pretty good point right there as far as
Bourbon Street goes. Yeah, I get that you don't want
to have a bunch of vehicles there with thousands of
people wandering the streets. That makes obviously common sense. But
to logistically pull that maneuver off, you then have to
deal with, all right, what are we going to do
with these cross streets? Are we going to make them dead?

Speaker 2 (03:44):
How to then people? You're also ending up directing traffic
to basically one little small part of the of the
French Quarter to allow them to travel. I want to
call it east, it's really east to west or north.
It's because they did right. The French Quarter is kind
of on an angle. So it's hard to to point
uh you know, north south east west here, but across
it if you will, uh, And so that does that

(04:07):
would it would affect the traffic patterns significantly. And like
I said, this is not just simply an entertainment district,
it's a it's an actual functioning neighborhood of New Orleans.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, when it's not party and I mean, you know,
it's it's like you said, there's people doing their everyday
life there and walking around and you know it's not you.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Know, it's bohemian without a doubt, but it's uh, you know,
it's part of it. It's part of the city's character,
and it's a functioning part of the city.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
I'm not sure people are tossing you know, beads for
deeds at lunch time. You know that's usually late.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Or when it's not Marty g exactly. So I mean
it's you know, there are businesses there are uh and
not just bars. I mean people have offices, people have restaurants,
people have art galleries, people have all these different businesses there.
Everything would be affected by this. So so are they
pushing is this standpoint?

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah, it's this whole thing. No, No, Are they pushing
for all or nothing as far as closing it down
or are they just looking to expand the hours of
closing it down to traffic.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Or is this like all right, well, the report, the
report generated by the security consultants. You know, again, they're
looking at this from strictly a security standpoint. That's what
they do, right, So there their thing is, Hey, if
you want this to be secure fully as best as
you can, you got to do this.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Now, it's just a report that was that was commissioned.
It's really up to policy makers to decide what they
want to do. They should certainly take this report. I
think in the you know, in the vein that it
was created as to where it's coming from, and I
think the information is it is good. But it's up
to the policy makers to balance that with the other
real world needs.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah, absolutely, one hundred percent. I mean I would imagine
somewhere in the middle of all this there'll be a
compromise and some movement to make it safer and maybe
some closures. But one hundred percent. Yeah, like you said,
cities not really too keen on it. Evan Brown, Thank you, buddy.
I appreciate the update.