Summary
New Orleans is installing new 10-mph-rated bollards on Bourbon Street to replace failing barriers ahead of the Feb. 9 Super Bowl, despite knowing they can’t stop moderate-to-high-speed vehicle attacks like the deadly New Year’s Day incident that killed 14.
The city prioritized ease of use over crash safety due to maintenance issues with older barriers.
Critics argue the new system leaves vulnerabilities, as the engineering report showed vehicles could still exceed the bollards’ speed rating.
Officials face scrutiny over balancing security and daily operations in the crowded tourist zone.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What the fuck are they made of, cardboard?
Someone else in another thread said their city uses garbage trucks to block traffic when there is a street party. Just parking them permanently on Bourbon street makes more sense than this.
NYC does this on some streets on NYE. They’re also immediately movable for emergency vehicles.
Security theatre
How hard is it to put some of those plastic barriers up that are filled with water?
Amazing to me how internet comments just seem to ALWAYS have experts who know everything about any quirky topic and will state things as if it’s so simple and obvious.
Is this really seen as a bad thing? Is bourbon street really supposed to capitulate to terror and install ultra-securtity defenses like they expect a high-speed attack every year? How many years has it been since the last similar attack? Is the secret that it never happened before and probably won’t again?
Yes
It’s an area with extremely high pedestrian traffic and cars. Regardless of what just happened, traffic barriers are a really good idea. Accidents happen.
They put bollards in front of shopping malls and I doubt it’s because they are trying to stop Blues Brothers re-enactors.
Skip that and install a tank.
You’re intentionally misunderstanding the situation. Heavy duty bollards are expensive. They don’t want to pay, because they don’t give a fuck. And your observation on rarity is backwards. Copycat killers exist. It worked once, why not do it again, they will accurately think.
You’re intentionally misunderstanding the situation. Heavy duty bollards are expensive.
Are we reading the same article?
The report outlined three different crash-rating standards for bollard systems. It concluded that the highest crash rating, which could withstand impacts from 15,000-pound vehicles traveling between 30 to 50 mph, was “not compatible” with the city’s needs to move the bollards every day.
“Specialized lifting equipment like a truck-mounted crane or heavy machinery would be necessary” to move such bollards daily, the report said.
They don’t want to pay, because they don’t give a fuck.
The funding comes from the state. The administration comes from the state. The last set the state funded in 2017 started failing within 6 months. That is why the replacement project was even happening.
It also took years for the state to fund the replacement.
There has historically been a lot of this type of tension between the state and the city. Despite the [mostly Democrat] city’s tax dollars largely funding the rest of the [mostly Republican/other] state, the state loves to cause all sorts of problems for the city.
The bollards, for instance. The state administers the FQMD. The FQMD commissioned them in the first place.
But will the FQMD operate them?
“We do not employ personnel that actually do work on a functional basis. We need to partner with the city, and we need a partner with other organizations like NOPD, like the sheriff’s department, like Troop Nola, to accomplish our objectives,” she said. “And so we’ve had discussions about all of these things over the years as it relates to public safety.”
Will the FQMD ensure that happens?
According to board meeting minutes reviewed by InvestigateTV, there were concerns about the bollard system itself — but also an ongoing staffing struggle over who was locking them into place each night.
In a Jan. 2019 report from the then-chair, state police and homeland security were not positioning and locking Quarter bollards despite requests to, and the city asked if the FQMD would consider taking on that responsibility.
This was met with concerns about liability, with one commissioner saying the bollards were “not a good system.”
Copycat killers exist. It worked once, why not do it again, they will accurately think.
Again, are we reading the same article?
The city currently has no bollards at Canal and Bourbon streets, where the attacker entered, but the roadway was blocked by an SUV police cruiser parked sideways on New Year’s.
Attack suspect Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. combat veteran from Texas, exploited another vulnerability in the city’s security planning: He squeezed his seven-foot-wide pickup onto an eight-foot-wide sidewalk between a drugstore wall and the police vehicle, stomping the accelerator and plowing through the crowd at about 3:15 a.m.
The police SUV blocking the street was more than sufficient as a replacement for the bollards. But the bollards (and the SUV) only block the street, not the sidewalk. Block the sidewalk too, and you run into ADA issues.
I don’t understand why they don’t just make the whole street permanently pedestrian-only. This isn’t that hard. You move things by cart along the street itself. Need to make a delivery? You drive it to within a couple blocks, then use a cart. Same for taking trash out.
This isn’t some radical new kind of logistics. Every shopping mall in America works like this. Shop owners don’t complain that they can’t drive a delivery truck right up to their store front in the mall. Customers manage to park and walk around just fine. Trash gets cleaned up.
This is the solution to this problem. But the people of the city or state are just too motoronormative to comprehend it.
