A new group of badly needed buses began to roll into New Orleans Regional Transit Authority headquarters last month, the first shipment in an effort by the agency to replace an aging fleet that has fallen into disrepair.
According to RTA executives, 14 new buses have arrived in New Orleans and are undergoing inspection before they are incorporated into the city’s active fleet. The agency ordered 21 new buses last September, amid a swirl of rider complaints of bus route delays that resulted from broken-down buses.
The RTA has been working to improve service following a number of recent hits to its reputation, among them a major contracting scandal that recently led Jefferson Parish, which is also part of the RTA, to begin the process of formally withdrawing from the agency.
The RTA’s current fleet includes more than 50 buses that were built in 2012 or earlier. The lifespan of a bus is typically 12 years.
Last summer, frequent breakdowns of these aging vehicles forced the RTA to take buses off the road during service, leaving riders to wait at bus stops for long periods of time in extreme heat. Delays continued through January, when the agency cut its active fleet by 15% and extended wait times between bus pick-ups from between three minutes and 40 minutes in the hopes that the changes would further improve reliability.

RTA Chief Asset Management Officer Ryan Moser and RTA CEO Lona Hankins confirmed that all 21 vehicles are still expected to be in regular use by September. The new buses will allow for the agency to fully retire eight of the 29 buses in RTA’s active fleet that are beyond their useful lives and to place most of the remaining 21 aging vehicles on contingency – to be used as substitute vehicles when buses are taken out of service.
But even with the new buses in its fleet, the agency does not plan to rescind its recent service cuts right away.
“We’re thinking September is going to be another steady state of current operations,” Hankins said. But the reliability should improve.”
Reliability problems
Data presented in recent RTA board meetings shows that systemwide on-time performance for most bus routes has hovered between 74% and 77% between May 2023 and May 2024, the most recent month for which data is available. The agency’s target for on-time bus service is 85%.
Courtney Jackson, executive director of transit advocacy non-profit Ride New Orleans, said bus users continue to complain about breakdowns and reliability issues.
“We are hearing and seeing – even us as bus riders – the impact on those breakdowns or are having on riders and so we’re happy that those will, with these new buses, stop,” Jackson said.
Jackson said riders her group has spoken to are hopeful for improvements with the new buses in the fleet. But she added that transit advocates are “bummed” that there are no immediate plans to rescind this year’s service cuts.
Hankins and Moser said if another shipment, of eight diesel buses, arrives in early 2025, the agency expects to reach its goal of 86 buses on the road during peak service hours, at which time it will update its schedule with reduced wait times between bus pick-ups.
Moser said ideally the agency would order between 12 and 14 new buses per year to allow it to steadily replace buses that have aged out of usefulness. However, the agency is years behind. The RTA did not place any orders for new buses between 2012 and 2019, and it is still working to catch up.
Of the 21 buses that are set to be in use by September, 15 are diesel-hybrid vehicles. Moser said multiple mechanical functions have been converted to electric on the hybrid vehicles. Other features allow for buses to switch to fully electric for up to three miles when the vehicles are operating in a “green zone” and for the engines to turn off when the buses are stopped without affecting air conditioning.
Jefferson Parish withdraws from RTA
Fleet reliability is not the only problem the RTA has faced in the past year, as a contracting scandal has shaken up its governing board, forcing a temporary halt in policymaking earlier this year when a series of resignations left the governing board short of a legal quorum required to conduct public meetings and take votes.
The Jefferson Parish Council recently approved a resolution to officially withdraw the parish from the RTA. Although most of the RTA’s bus lines operate exclusively in New Orleans, it also operates routes that run from the city to Jefferson Parish and provides bus service in Kenner.
Jefferson Parish’s exit from the RTA has been in the works for months, following revelations early this year that the agency had been paying a construction contractor without authorization.
In February, an RTA investigation into payments made to contractor BRC Construction Group, led all three of the commissioners representing Jefferson Parish to abruptly resign. The investigation, first reported by The Times-Picayune, found that a top RTA official had signed off on more than $1 million in payments to the company without board approval. A fourth member, former New Orleans City Attorney Sunni LeBeouf — one of five commissioners appointed by the mayor of New Orleans — followed suit in early March.
Soon after the resignations, Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng announced that she planned to withdraw the parish from the RTA. Though there was no easy way to do that at the time under state law, new state legislation passed this year allows for the parish to exit the agency with a council vote, which the Jefferson Parish Council took last week.
The council’s resolution started a 45-day countdown to the parish’s withdrawal from the RTA. Hankins said next month’s board of commissioners meeting will likely be the last one to include representatives from Jefferson Parish.
Hankins and Lee Sheng have previously said that bus service on lines that run from Orleans Parish into Jefferson Parish – the airport express that travels from the main branch of the New Orleans Public Library to the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner and the route that runs from Tulane University to Elmwood – should not be interrupted as a result of the withdrawal.
When she announced her plan to withdraw in March, Lee Sheng said she expected the agency would continue to operate those lines under a contract with the parish going forward. Lee Sheng did not immediately respond to a request for comment.