The White House said the Claiborne Expressway should go. It's not that simple. - NOLA.com

The long push to tear down Interstate 10 over N. Claiborne Avenue received a critical endorsement earlier this spring, when President Joe Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure proposal specifically called out the span that bisects Tremé as a historic inequity in need of removal.

But White House support is only one of many things that would need to fall into place in order to return Claiborne to its former glory. Preliminary studies conducted over the past decade suggest years of additional planning and construction — and the outlay of potentially billions of dollars — would need to happen before the project comes to fruition.

A mural of the late New Orleans musician Allen Toussaint is seen on a building at the corner of Kerlerec Street and N. Claiborne Avenue on Friday, May 14, 2021. (Photo by Brett Duke, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)

STAFF PHOTO BY BRETT DUKE

And while Mayor LaToya Cantrell's administration is eagerly eying the federal funds that could be available under the infrastructure plan, officials said this week that Claiborne isn't near the top of the city's wish list of needed projects.

Ramsay Green, Cantrell's deputy chief administrative officer for infrastructure, said in an interview Wednesday that drainage work, improvements to the drinking water system and repairs to surface streets are all better candidates for federal money than what would be a massive, years-long project to reroute traffic through the city.

"I think about residents and what the major priorities are," Green said. "My interpretation is that their priorities are: don't have boil water advisories, that water doesn't flood in our neighborhoods and we figure out a way that, if we're going to see the impacts of climate change in our city, that we're prepared for it."

President Joe Biden pitched his plan to modernize the country's infrastructure during two Louisiana stops on Thursday, telling a small crowd i…

Even if the Cantrell administration threw its full weight behind taking down the Claiborne Expressway, there would be significant hurdles.

First, Biden's infrastructure proposal is still tied up in Congress, where it is expected to face broad — if not complete — opposition from Republicans in both the House and Senate. It remains unclear what the final bill will look like, or if it will include explicit funding for two highway removal projects — in New Orleans and Syracuse, New York — highlighted by the White House when it unveiled its plan.

Whatever the final outcome, the Biden administration has said it would be up to city leaders to decide how to best spend the money in their communities.

"That's up to the locals and we would leave that to the mayor to decide her priorities," said Cedric Richmond, who represented New Orleans in Congress before becoming the head of Biden's Office of Public Engagement.

But the lack of interest from the city - particularly when the federal government seems eager to put its weight and funding behind the project - has riled some long time advocates. In not centering the removal of the Claiborne Expressway in their plans, the Cantrell administration is ignoring a unjust history that continues to reverberate through the area to this day, said Amy Stelly, an urban planner who has long led the efforts to remove the interstate.

President Joe Biden has argued his wide-ranging, $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan is a solution to decades of underinvestment in roads, pipes…

"When you look at what this inflicts, not to mention the economic hardship and disinvestment it brings, yes it needs to be at the top of the list if we want to make New Orleans a healthy and viable city," Stelly said. "Clearly the people are not first here."

Years of planning

Taking down the Claiborne Expressway has been talked about for years, though never with the kind of detail that would be needed to move forward with a plan. Both a report written to guide the New Orleans' recovery after Hurricane Katrina and its 2008 master plan called for the city to look into whether, and how, to remove the highway.

The first step in that direction was a 2010 report by the Congress of New Urbanism, which has advocated for the removal of urban freeways that bisect communities as I-10 does. That study painted a picture of the possibilities that could exist on Claiborne, including its return as boulevard and the recreation of the historic traffic circle at St. Bernard Avenue that predated the highway.

Four years after that plan, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funded a study that laid out how it all might be accomplished. A team of transit planners, economic-development consultants and other experts created a menu of options that ranged from full removal of the highway from St. Bernard Avenue to Tulane Avenue to leaving it in place but getting rid of a few on-ramps at key intersections.

Fifty-five years ago this winter, work began on building the Claiborne Expressway through 2.5 miles of New Orleans neighborhoods.

The most expansive plan would reconfigure the Pontchartrain Expressway on the edge of the Warehouse District and build collector roads to handle the 140,000 cars and trucks — including port traffic — that travel the Claiborne Expressway each day. A new highway would run from Broad Street to Tchoupitoulas Street to help move traffic around the East Bank while the Pontchartrain Expressway brought traffic across the Mississippi River.

The proposed $2 trillion infrastructure plan being unveiled by President Joe Biden Wednesday is aimed at fixing thousands of roads and bridges…

That proposal, which estimated no change in travel times for most trips within the city, also called for hundreds of millions in investments in rapid-transit improvements and a streetcar line along Claiborne, pushing the total costs above $4 billion.

In its initial roll-out of the infrastructure plan, the Biden administration said it would be dedicating a total of $20 billion to a program to "reconnect neighborhoods cut off" by past infrastructure investments.

The U.S. interstate highway system was a modern marvel that sped travel across the country and spurred the growth of hundreds of cities and suburbs. But it also accelerated White flight from urban areas while many of its spurs — particularly those running through inner cities — sliced through minority communities and devastated thriving neighborhoods.

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'Main Street of Black New Orleans'

North Claiborne Avenue, seen from the air, in 1949.

Courtesy of New Orleans Public Library

Before the elevated expressway was built, Claiborne Avenue was the oak-lined heart of Tremé known as "the Main Street of Black New Orleans" with shop and other businesses catering to the community.

That changed with a 1946 plan to update the city's arterial system. It was initially designed by famed city planner Robert Moses, who became infamous for slicing highways through poor neighborhoods, including the Cross-Bronx Expressway in New York City. In New Orleans, Moses sought to build an expressway not through Tremé but along the riverfront of the French Quarter, which was then a White working-class neighborhood.

It began in 2010 with a proposal to tear down the elevated Interstate 10 expressway over North Claiborne Avenue. It then expanded into a much …

Moses discouraged building a highway over Claiborne Avenue because it was outside the city center and because of its potential effects on the area, according to Tulane University geographer Richard Campanella.

But a decade later the City Planning Commission added it to the plans anyway. And while preservationists successfully scuttled the riverfront highway, the Black residents of Tremé didn't have the same political clout.

A map of the 1957 highway plan, showing an expressway along the French Quarter riverfront as well as one along Claiborne Avenue.

The Times-Picayune

The undoing of similar historic errors has occurred in other cities as urban cores have seen a revival. But they've cost billions of dollars and taken decades. The Big Dig in Boston, which took down an elevated expressway, replaced it with parks and rerouted traffic underground, took more than 25 years.

Jeff Roesel, who heads the New Orleans Metropolitan Regional Planning Commission, noted that a much simpler project than the Big Dig or removing the Claiborne Expressway — the widening of I-10 — is still underway in Jefferson Parish nearly 20 years after it was first approved.

"I don't want to say it can't be done because if you've got enough time and money you can do a whole bunch of stuff. But it would be very challenging," Roesel said.

Other priorities

Green, the city's infrastructure chief, said the city had not requested that the White House highlight Claiborne Avenue when it promoted the infrastructure plan. On reading those early materials, Green said he saw it less as a specific project to be pursued than a warning about the damage that can be caused by projects built "without measuring the human cost of installing such infrastructure."

But at the moment, Green said the city's priorities are focused on other concerns: fixing the city's ancient and broken drainage system and streets.

In terms of righting past wrongs, Ramsey suggested that providing justice for the residents of Gordon Plaza, a neighborhood of 54 homes built on a landfill near Florida Avenue, and restoring Lincoln Beach, a recreation area on Lake Pontchartrain for Black residents during segregation, were on officials' minds.

North Claiborne Avenue's famous oak canopy, seen in 1947, near Ursulines Avenue.

Courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection

New Orleans is now in the midst of a citywide road reconstruction program, primarily funded by a $2.4 billion settlement with FEMA for damage during Hurricane Katrina. Even after that work is done, the city has estimated that another $800 million will be needed to fix roads deemed to be "failing" and $1.2 billion to fix drainage lines throughout the city, Green said.

"We've got to do some real heavy lifting before we can make that a priority," Green said of Claiborne.

Stelly challenged the idea that Claiborne wasn't the nexus of all the other issues the city has sought to address, pointing to the economic impacts, the drainage and environmental problems of dirty rainwater that now runs off the highway and the potential health effects of living on such a highly-trafficked corridor. She also blamed the interstate for attracting homeless residents and drug dealers to the neighborhood.

"One of the most obvious impacts is the total disinvestment in the neighborhood and yes there are things that are creeping back but we're looking at a 50-plus year period of disinvestment in addition to all the environmental ills and social ills that come with that," she said.

Supporters and fans of FOX 8 News anchor Nancy Parker and radio host CJ Morgan second-line under the Claiborne avenue overpass in New Orleans, Saturday, Aug. 17, 2019. Nancy Parker died Friday afternoon in a plane crash while covering a story about pilot Franklin Augustus. CJ Morgan, a longtime radio host, died August 15 at age 61.

STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER

When it comes to what the city is hoping for out of the infrastructure bill, look no further than what it chose to show Biden when he was in town earlier this month. Instead of heading to Tremé and the expressway, officials took Biden to the Sewerage & Water Board's Carrollton Plant, home of its creaking turbines and aging water system.

Still, much may depend on exactly how the final infrastructure plan is structured. Richmond said that as designed, the infrastructure plan would put different types of funding in different buckets. New Orleans might be able to apply for money to improve streets and pipes while also seeking funds to take down the interstate.

"I'm interested in seeing where this could go, but when the White House mentions it, that's serious and it's important," Green said. "So we have sort of discussed it internally, discussed it with the (state Department of Transportation and Development) and we're curious what kind of direction this might take."

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