The Rampart-St. Claude line was the newest of the streetcar lines. Built as an expansion of the Loyola-UPT Line, it commenced service in 2016. Unfortunately, the little line was caught in the midst of a major engineering disaster we all know too well. On October 12, 2019, a partially-built building collapsed; this caused the overhead lines to snap along with the foundation of the track to break. It took a while to clear the rubble and then the Coronavirus pandemic hit. The effects of the pandemic slowed progress on rebuilding on the line and the deadline kept being kicked down the road. Years passed with vague deadlines being announced and passed without anything.
Then, NORTA announced construction would begin on February 29th and it did. Having visited the site myself, I could see that stuff was actually getting done; there were numerous cherry pickers and spare poles on the site. According to NORTA, construction will end on March 31st and the line will begin public operation, following 6 weeks of testing and training operators, in late May. The line has been out of service more years than it has been in service, but hopefully that will no longer be the case.
