New Orleans public transit isn't reliable. RTA's next CEO will have to come up with a solution

The new leader will take over an agency struggling to pick up riders on-time and projected to face a funding shortfall that could require future cuts to service.

By Blake Paterson | Times-Picayune - New Orleans Advocate (TNS)

The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority will begin accepting applications this week for a new CEO after Lona Edwards Hankins resigned from the post in May after falling out of favor with Mayor Helena Moreno’s newly installed board.

Whoever is chosen has plenty to tackle.

The next CEO will take over an agency struggling to pick up riders on-time across its fleet of buses, streetcars and paratransit shuttles. It’s projected to face a shortfall in funding in the coming years that without new revenues could require future cuts to service.

A major revamp of its bus system, known as New Links, hasn't lived up to its promise of faster commutes and shorter wait times. And its workforce has been riven by internal disputes, resulting in several six-figure settlements with former employees and lawsuits alleging workplace discrimination.

“The organization needs a lot of healing,” said RTA Board Chair Ann Duplessis, Moreno's pick to lead an agency that counted more than 13.5 million passenger boardings last year. She added that the next CEO will need to "have a deep, genuine respect" for the experience of riders and that her goal is to pick a new leader by the end of August.

The selection of a new CEO for the RTA will mark one of the first major leadership changes at an agency in New Orleans under the new administration. Moreno, who took office in January, has said she expects major changes at the RTA during her tenure, vowing in a speech in April "to get that regional piece" back into an agency that's now almost entirely focused on New Orleans. In February, she swept out former Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s RTA board appointees and replaced them with her own.

Transit is a key quality-of-life issue in the city, and for many New Orleanians, the RTA is their only affordable option to get to work. Some 17% of households in the city don't have access to a vehicle, and RTA bus service is often relied on by hospitality-industry employees and others who work in service jobs in downtown neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, demand for public transit in New Orleans is on the rise. The number of people riding the RTA’s buses reached a 10-year high in 2025.

But the rider experience is often "incredibly frustrating," according to Courtney Jackson, executive director of the rider advocacy group RIDE New Orleans.

One out of every four RTA buses failed to arrive on-time last year, according to agency data. In April, the RTA canceled around 2% of its scheduled bus service, largely due to a lack of working vehicles, but also because of road closures, police barricades and driver shortages, agency officials said.

“Riders are more likely to use public transportation if they know their bus is going to show up and show up when it says it's going to show up,” Jackson said. “Right now, people don’t trust that they’re going to get to where they need to go.”

In a statement, Moreno said the next CEO needs to focus on "delivering reliable, accessible service while strengthening regional connectivity and expanding access to effective public transportation."

Expanding access?

Even though many New Orleanians rely on the RTA to get to work, the agency has made little progress in recent years in expanding riders’ access to employment opportunities.

The average New Orleans resident can reach less than a third of the region’s jobs in 60 minutes on public transit, according to a RIDE analysis from 2025. The metric has barely budged since the advocacy group began tracking it a decade ago.

In 2022, the RTA launched a major bus network redesign called New Links in an attempt to speed up riders’ commute and improve regional connectivity. The redesign, the first since Hurricane Katrina, did away with some routes and reconfigured others. It promised to increase the number of bus lines with vehicles arriving at least every 20 minutes and to expand service on nights and weekends.

However, less than a year after rolling out the redesign, the RTA began cutting back on the frequency on certain routes. It has yet to return to the service it promised when it launched New Links.

The reason, according to agency officials: The RTA doesn't have enough buses.

In order for New Links to work as intended, the RTA needs an active fleet of 140 buses. With an aging fleet and a shortage of mechanics, the RTA struggled to keep enough buses on the roads after it launched the redesign. Hankins, who joined the RTA as infrastructure chief in 2019 and was named permanent CEO in March 2023, inherited the bus shortage problem. Under her watch, the RTA developed a fleet replacement plan and secured federal funding that officials said should have the agency back to an active fleet of 140 buses by 2028.

Until then, the RTA and its next CEO will be constrained in their efforts to expand service and make it more reliable.

Lola Reynard knows those issues well. She budgets around two hours to get from her apartment in Gentilly to her job at The National WWII Museum downtown. It’s a three-mile commute that would take less than 25 minutes by car.

On a good day, it takes her around an hour on public transit. But the 24-year-old New Orleans native has learned to plan for unexpected delays on the 52 Paris-Broadmoor line, which in April had an on-time performance of 77.4%. One time, she said, her bus broke down on her way to work and again on her way home.

“At the end of the day, they get people from A to B,” Reynard said during a recent interview on an RTA bus. “But there’s been times where I’m like, oh, this really sucks.”

The RTA said it is making adjustments with the resources it has. In September, the RTA plans to implement service changes on the West Bank to make it easier for residents to get to grocery stores. RTA officials will begin reaching out to New Orleans East residents in July as part of a similar service-improvement effort.

In a prepared statement, RTA Interim CEO Ronald Baptiste said that "providing safe, reliable service remains a central focus for the RTA."

"During this transition period, the agency remains focused on day-to-day operations, monitoring service performance, coordinating across operations teams, and continuing planned service improvement efforts," he said.

Funding challenges

To maintain existing service levels in the coming years, the next CEO will also need to secure new revenues. Sales taxes make up around 85% of the RTA's operating revenues. Passenger fares, meanwhile, make up 10%.

By 2028, the agency expects to face a $9 million shortfall in funding for its bus, streetcar and paratransit services, according to a RIDE analysis. The RTA hasn't raised its passenger fares since 1999, though RTA Commissioner Barbara Major said the agency needs to improve its service before raising prices or seeking more from taxpayers.

The next CEO will also be tasked with securing federal dollars for a long-planned bus rapid transit line connecting New Orleans East to the Central Business District and Algiers.

The RTA has several other capital projects in the works thanks to nearly $200 million in federal grants secured by the RTA since 2019. Construction is underway on the $11.4 million Algiers Ferry terminal renovation, and the RTA is in the process of procuring an architect for its $33 million Downtown Transit Center on Basin Street near Canal Street.

"These were federal dollars that we aggressively went after in order to build better infrastructure," Hankins said at a RTA board meeting in December, noting that without the grants, the agency would have had to rely on bonds.

Setbacks, controversies

While Hankins notched several wins during her time as CEO, her three-year tenure also included a string of controversies.

The biggest came in early 2024, when half of the RTA’s board resigned after learning about a construction contract that had ballooned in value. The episode prompted Jefferson Parish to pull out of the RTA entirely.

The RTA also faced criticism for the slow pace of progress in improving its paratransit service for disabled riders. RTA officials say many of the issues with paratransit should be resolved with the roll-out of new scheduling software later this year.

In April, internal personnel issues at the RTA burst into view, when a dozen current and former RTA employees filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging rampant workplace discrimination and wage theft and accusing Hankins of violating free speech protections.

The Moreno administration said the lawsuit underscored why "meaningful reform and structural change" at the RTA was needed.

The RTA board has hired North Carolina-based KL2 Connects to conduct the search for the CEO. The firm has already met with City Council members, Moreno, union representatives and RIDE to hear what they want in the next CEO, Duplessis said.

Better communication

While the RTA faces problems that can't be fixed overnight, the next CEO could improve the rider experience by doing a better job at communicating service disruptions, Jackson said.

The RTA makes note of disruptions on its website and in its mobile LePass app. But they often lack essential details, like which stops are closed, where to catch a rerouted bus and how long the disruption will last.

Waiting at a bus shelter outside the Main Library downtown on a recent Saturday, Charles Thecook, 65, said the 57 Franklin-Freret bus he takes to his restaurant job Uptown is late almost daily.

"You never know if you're going to get to work on time or not," he said. "They miss routes. The bus breaks down. The bus don't come according to the schedule. It's really not dependable."

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