NEW ORLEANS — The sign next to a giant Cone Head near Leake and Oak Streets says "Welcome to Pothole City."
It’s a sign of the times as people travel the torn-up streets of New Orleans.
Neighbors complain hundreds of ongoing street and drainage projects across the city, all at the same time, have been mishandled, mismanaged and just plain miserable to endure.
“It feels like it’s been well more than a year,” Zack Lemman said. “We were promised it would be fixed a lot faster than it has been and unfortunately, the whole city looks like this. I think it’s deplorable.”
Lemman has a house on Joliet Street in the Carrollton neighborhood.
He says his street has been torn up for about two years.
“All I know is you can’t drive, and you can’t park when it’s like this and the work ought to be done a little more efficiently,” Lemman said.
This week a hole opened at St. Charles and Adams Street. A school bus got stuck after running over the hole.
It happened outside Charles Teamer’s home.
“There was a leak here and apparently the city came and opened it up further and put some boards on it,” Teamer said.
There is ongoing roadwork up and down the street.
“It’s kind of like car bingo, you turn down a street and you don’t know if it’s going to be blocked off,” Teamer said. “You know, one day it’s opened, the next day it’s not.”
Two weeks ago, we brought you the story of Lake Burdette between Neron Place and Sycamore Street.
Mo Mayer is happy to report, a crew did fix a leaking water pipe outside her home.
“They brought loads of dirt out two days in a row and filled it so Lake Burdette hopefully is gone,” Mayer said.
The lake is gone, but not the beach.
Mayer has no idea when contractors will finally pave her street.
“It’s not over ‘til it’s over and it is not over,” she said.
Shared pain in a city under construction.
“I don’t know if this is a budgetary issue or a competence issue with regard to management of the project,” Lemman said. “But it’s happening all over the city and it’s just on such a large scale.”
The City did not answer WWL-TV’s request for comment.
But city managers did recently cut the number of days contractors have to complete each job from 120 to 70.
The city is also in the process of structuring new contracts, requiring crews to finish one job before moving onto the next.
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