I haven't yet been to New Orleans

Eye over SE Louisiana at 8:45 a.m. NOAA photo.

Dave Martin/AP. Debris from a fallen building covers several cars and buildings in downtown New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina battered the Louisiana Coast today.

But am planning to go in April for the National Main Streets Conference. New Orleans has more historic buildings than just about any city in the United States and an activist preservationist community. It was also one of the great centers of anti-freeway activism in the 1960s.

And it has recently launched a new trolley line, with the cars constructed in the city, as part of a joint venture with the manufacturer.

Along the new North Carrollton branch, the cars operate in traffic lanes, but passenger platforms are in the neutral ground. Photo: Jim Schantz.

For more information on the new Canal Street trolley line, see this webpage.

Let's hope the city makes it through this hurricane, which has diminished somewhat and changed tracks from earlier forecasts.