NEW ORLEANS — If you get caught by a train on Little Farms Avenue in River Ridge, you could be there for a while.
“They’ll just sit right here at the crossing,” Jim LeBlanc said. “It can be a hassle and a problem.”
“It’s just a long train when it does go through, you know,” Richard Smith said. “Everybody gets caught by this train, especially in the evening times.”
“You just have to wait for the train or go around,” Israel Kendrick said. “A lot of times you go around, the train moved.”
You can now check a live camera link on the Jefferson Parish website to see in real time if there’s a train blocking the tracks there.
“Click on it,” JP District 2 Councilman Deano Bonano said. “Use it. Store it on your phone.”
Bonano came up with the idea after hearing complaints from constituents about having to sit and wait at the tracks for 20-30 minutes.
“If you’re rushing to get your kids to school or if you’re late for work, you can take another alternate route and avoid that traffic,” Bonano said. “That is one of the main intersections to get in and out of River Ridge. When that area is blocked, traffic backs up quite a while down Little Farms Avenue.”
Bonano called the train camera a pilot program. He said if it works, he’ll push to put similar cameras up at other railroad crossings, across Jefferson Parish.
“My next big problem area is Central Avenue, where there are actually 5 sets of tracks that can be blocked,” Bonano said.
Residents say the Little Farms train cam makes sense.
“I think it’s pretty neat if you know you’re going this way,” Smith said. “It will be really convenient.”
“I like it because you can check it to see if I can come by Little Farms or if I have to go around,” LeBlanc said.
Other possible locations for the real time traffic cameras include the Metairie Road train crossing and the 4th Street draw bridge over the Harvey Canal on the Westbank.
Here is a link to the Little Farms train cam: www.jeffparish.net/littlefarms