A French Quarter group is opposing a plan for a new tourist attraction called "Ride the Duck" and calling for a moratorium on all new permits for tour vehicles in the French Quarter until the city studies how the proliferation of such ventures is impacting the historic neighborhood. Gray Line Tours is seeking permits for three "ducks," which are...
A French Quarter group is opposing a plan for a new tourist attraction called "Ride the Duck" and calling for a moratorium on all new permits for tour vehicles in the French Quarter until the city studies how the proliferation of such ventures is impacting the historic neighborhood.
Gray Line Tours is seeking permits for three "ducks," which are based on amphibious World War II supply transport vehicles, first built by Higgins Industries in New Orleans. Each vehicle has a capacity for up to 37 people. They would operate four tours a day during the busy season for an estimated total of 50,000 people per year.
"The French Quarter is already getting very clogged and overused by these tours," including double-decker buses, Segways, bicycles, scooters, pedicabs, horse and buggies and mini-cars, Meg Lousteau, executive director of the Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents and Associates, said at Tuesday's Vieux Carre Commission meeting. "We are reaching critical mass and saturation. We have nothing against this proposal. We're just looking out for the best long-term interest of the French Quarter."
Ryan Berni, a spokesman for Mayor Mitch Landrieu, said the city is opposed to a moratorium and that large vehicles are permitted to operate on the outskirts of the French Quarter.
The duck tours would start at the Toulouse Street wharf on the Mississippi River, take North Peters Street to Canal Street to City Park Avenue, jump on Interstate 10, and exit on Bonnabel Boulevard to access the boat launch on Lake Pontchartrain. The entire trip will take up to two hours including a 25-minute ride on the lake.
Other cities that offer the "ride the duck" tours include Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle and San Francisco.
Gordon Stevens, CEO and president of Gray Line, said the vehicles will not enter the interior of the French Quarter and will pick up passengers only at the wharf and, possibly, the World War II Museum. He produced a study by the traffic engineering firm Urban Systems that concluded the ducks will "have no significant impact on roadway and intersection traffic operations" in the Central Business District and Vieux Carre.
"The French Quarter is our lifeblood, just as it is everyone else's," Stevens said at the VCC meeting. "We love it and we've been good corporate citizens of the French Quarter for many years, so we feel just as passionately about it and its long-term viability as you do."
Tour vehicles require certificates of public necessity and convenience, or CPNCs, awarded by the Taxicab Bureau, to operate. The city has issued 136 "sight-seeing and general charter" CPNCs that include passenger vans, mini-buses and double-decker buses. There is no limit to the number of these types of CPNCs the city can issue.
The VCC has no official role in the process, but Stevens said the company presented the plan to the commission as a courtesy.
VCC Chairman Ralph Lupin was not impressed. He said he had just come from a presentation by officials with Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport who predicted that up to 12 million people would be flying into the city annually by 2018.
That number, Lupin said, is staggering, and the full force of all of those people would be felt most strongly in the French Quarter, which he said is already inundated by all manner of tourism-related vehicles.
"I think we ought to call upon the (Landrieu) administration to look at this matter and determine if we should continue to allow free access to the streets of the French Quarter for every commercial venture that comes up because sooner or later it will kill the Quarter," Lupin said. "I am concerned (Gray Line's) vehicles will only add to the misery and it will be terrible."
Stevens presented letters of support from the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, the New Orleans Tourism and Marketing Corporation, the Greater New Orleans Hotel & Lodging Association, the French Quarter Business Association, the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce, and the Jefferson Parish Chamber of Commerce, Convention and Visitors Bureau and Economic Development Corporation.
"If New Orleans is going to maintain and grow our relevance in the travel trade, we must diversify and create new offerings," said Stephen Perry, president and CEO of the CVB. "This tour satisfies many of the requirements to do just that. It would be unfortunate if we allow ourselves to stagnate and become complacent in this effort."