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New Orleans Regional Transit Authority board commissioner Mitchell Guidry remembers getting the call on August 29, 2005. He was at a picnic near Joe Brown Park, close to his New Orleans East home. He was the transit agency’s operations manager at the time.
“The storm has turned,” his supervisor said. “You need to come in.”
Before the storm hit, Guidry was in charge of scheduling for 19 bus routes, more than 300 buses, five streetcar lines and park and ride transit in New Orleans East and in the West Bank.
When it was over, two thirds of the bus fleet had flooded. In the years after the storm, he remained at the agency and managed to bring some lines back.
But the one he missed most — the Vieux Carre line, where he met his wife — never returned. The line, with buses designed to look like the historic St. Charles Streetcar, used to run from the Marigny through the French Quarter.
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