Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
Unlike some pedestrian-only zones, such as in New York City’s Times Square, Bourbon Street is open to regular vehicle traffic for much of the day, requiring city officials to block parts of it off from surrounding streets each evening.
Once again, driver convenience takes precedence over people's lives. You want the shops and the tourism, then commit and make it pedestrian-only.
yeah sorta amazes me they allow cars at all.
It doesn’t amaze me that they let in street cleaners though, if you’ve ever seen that place in the morning.
It amazes me that they have street cleaners at all. That city is nasty as hell.
They have street cleaning down to an art. It’s amazing to watch. Does the French Quarter often smell like a mixture of piss and vomit? Yes, because drunk tourists are consistently doing these things on the streets/sidewalks.
Not to mention all of the leftover trash from the various parades…imagine if there was no regular street cleaning.
It’s truly a spectacle to behold.
Ok. Here's a crazy idea. We just...stop with the street cleaning and trash collection. First, pass a law that everything must be sold in biodegradable containers. Then, just let things lay wherever they are dropped! Over time, like archaeological sediment, all the trash dumped in the French Quarter will slowly compact, decompose, and turn into soil, thus raising the elevation of the ground. As the French Quarter is already one of the highest elevations in the city, this increased sediment will flow downhill, gradually raising the elevation of the entire city. Eventually, they won't even need the dyke system anymore, as the whole city will be raised well above sea level! The city will be like one of those ancient Mississippian mound building cultures. Except this mound will mostly be composed of piss, vomit, and plastic beads.
I think the best part of this little thought experiment is that the solution is basically "fill new Orleans in with Garbage"
I wonder if you would be able to smell the different layers unique flavors as eras favor a certain alcohol cocktail over another. Could have a really famous scientist in 1,000 years that could tell you within a 20 year time period what layer some sediment came from by just taking a whiff.
I think microplastics and biohazards would come into play at some point, but sure, why not. Choose your own adventure.
They also don’t have alleys there so all the bar trash is just tossed in the front. It’s really a gross ass place.
I used to live there and yes, Bourbon St. is gross, but I was trying to say that it is cleaned regularly and very well. But it will also continue to be regularly trashed, so the cycle will continue indefinitely.
In Marti gras, the "street cleaners" were front-end loaders.
It was disgusting how much trash everyone generated.
seeing people walk their kids to church passing by the strip club with photos on the entrance and guys literally hosing out the bar. What a sight.
Makes sense for deliveries and freight, but as someone else said, they really should invest in those retractable post barriers.
I think they had those, but they broke because they stopped paying the maintenance company.
What do you have to pay? You just need a couple concrete posts in a hole with a padlock on them.
It was probably one of those fancy electric ones with remote access. Cities will pay millions for something like that instead of the low tech solution of just having a guy with a key there that'll set you back a few tens of thousands a year.
Or just give a key to the fire department and the municipal waste department.
Even with the high tech electric option, you probably still want at least one armed guard sitting watch at the intersection between pedestrians and people operating pedestrian-murder-machines
Anything that a person (or two) can unlock, lift up and move out of the way isn't even close to structurally sound enough to stop a large vehicle with speed, mass and determination on its side.
They should install permanent barriers that can stop the largest of trucks. Then simply close the whole area off to vehicle traffic. Within the district, the only vehicles allowed are bicycles, cargo bikes, and small golf carts. You bring in deliveries by bicycle or other small electric vehicle. People living there can park their vehicles a few block away in lots located outside the pedestrian-only zone. Trash can hauled by cart a few blocks and then transferred to regular trucks.
We have zero problem organizing logistics like these for every shopping mall in the country. Yet somehow it become impossible the moment the shopping mall no longer has a roof on it.
I feel like they could install the automatic ones that retract fully into the ground and they trigger at set times or has someone come around to activate them and put them away in the morning. Seen those ones stop cars in their tracks.
Vehicles ‘could’ exceed the speed rating? Man, even my fat ass at a brisk walk could topple these things over.
Frankly I’m shocked they didn’t have proper working barriers. They should’ve just put up some concrete blocks while the existing stuff was being renovated.
This type of attack is very, very common in Europe and the Middl-East, so this isn’t exactly an unprecedented method. But also: you’d want to have barriers anyway to guard against drunk drivers or drivers not paying attention. They should be high priority.
I feel like there are a lot of misunderstandings here and it makes sense as to why.
New Orleans (my former home) is complicated. It’s not as straightforward as bollards vs no bollards or vehicles vs pedestrians, etc.
NOLA has obviously been through a lot over the past 20 years - Katrina, Rita, and recently Ida in 2021 were all hard hitting storms.
The influx of visitors for Mardi Gras in 2020 is what made Covid especially devastating for the city.
It’s a poor city that relies on tourism to stay alive. The overall education system in Louisiana is abysmal and the politics are extremely dysfunctional. The rest of the state (conservative) despises NOLA (liberal), but they realize their livelihoods depend on its debauchery so they “allow” it (a whole other story).
So the city needs tourism to stay alive. The tourists mostly stick to the French Quarter - Bourbon Street is the famous one, right? There are a lot of businesses on Bourbon - mostly bars/clubs, tourist shops, restaurants, some hotels, etc.
Those places need to be able to receive regular deliveries, but there are also residences on Bourbon and in the FQ as a whole.
Could some system be put up to accommodate the delivery drivers, the employees, the residents, the tourists who park at hotels, taxis/Uber/Lyft and the safety of pedestrians? Let’s assume sure, why not.
Where does the money come from? The city itself is poor. The state hates the city so why do they need to direct money to the place of sin and majority poor Black residents? Louisiana infrastructure overall is shit, anyway. Federal? Okay, but that would mean the city talking to the state talking to the federal government and that’s fucked up in so many ways. And Trump is about to be inaugurated, so good luck with that.
My point is/TLDR - projects like this aren’t something that NOLA can do on its own. The state won’t help it and I don’t expect the Trump admin to, either.
It’s a difficult and complex situation and most Louisiana politicians have no incentive to do anything about it until it somehow begins to impact them directly. They’ll just get on TV during press conferences and point fingers at the failure of the liberal NOLA politicians while ignoring their own failure to act over the years.
It’s a fucking shitshow and it’s sad.
Deliveries can be made by cargo bicycles, as they do in Europe.
The only reason a reinforced concrete barrier should be moved is to permit entry is for ambulances and fire trucks.
Bikes can only really do final mile deliveries. They still use trucks/trains for bulk deliveries in Europe. You local grocery store isn't getting stocked by bikes.
Thats exactly what we're talking about with NO. Making Burbon St car-free.
You can still have a street a mile away have a lot for truck parking, unloading onto bikes for final last mile delivery to car-free sections
No supermarket can exist from deliveries by cargo bikes. That's why cargo bikes supplying shops is a rare exception, even in Europe.
And if you have a viable idea how to move substatial concrete barriers that could prevent such an attack fast enough for emergency vehicles, please post.
It's not to improve security it's to boost sense of security.
OK, they might add a '10 mph' traffic sign too.
Security theater raises its ugly head once again.
Wouldn't be the first time New Orleans has ignored engineering reports
If you’re referring to the levees that failed during Katrina, that was the fault of the Army Corps of Engineers.
They were redone and performed as intended during category 4 Hurricane Ida - the hurricane that hit the city in 2021. It was the first big test.
I highly recommend the book “The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina: The Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist” by Ivor van Heerden.
The author was a cofounder of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center and lost his job after speaking out about the levee failures.
It’s not tinfoil hat stuff - I’m a degreed engineer and he goes into great detail about things like different soil compositions and what types of beams need to be used to work effectively.
It’s still not a difficult read though, and he also goes into social issues such as the poor Black community in New Orleans and corruption in Louisiana politics.
Highly, highly recommend.
Should go with one of these bollards, no truck has ever got past it.
I'm still waiting for the impact. It's a few hours now. I should eat, drink, sleep, ...
This is just a one off. I'm not suddenly gonna put bollards in front of my house just because a guy could drive into my living room. Yeah it's a possibility, but fairly remote. I much rather retrofit my house with bullet proof glass and walls to protect me from drive by shootings.
My 30 year old grandma car can make it to 40 before I clear the entire intersection most of the time.
10mph is less than the indoor go-kart track barriers near me are rated for.
Security theater at its finest.
pedestrian-only zones, such as in New York City’s Times Square
Times Square isn't pedestrian-only. Parts of Broadway have been turned into pedestrian-only areas but 7th Avenue and all the cross streets are open to cars and very busy. There are bollards and concrete barriers between the cars and the pedestrians.
