In the aftermath of Wednesday’s terror attack on Bourbon Street, some New Orleans city officials are renewing their calls to close Bourbon Street to vehicular traffic permanently.
Councilman-at-Large J. P. Morrell says the measures that were in place ahead of the New Year’s Day assault, including placing police cars and barricades at entrance points along Bourbon Street, were insufficient.
“We have always known that Bourbon Street is a soft target,” Morrell said to WWL’s Dave Cohen, adding that federal law enforcement identified Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras as possible terrorist targets in the days after the 9/11 attacks.
Morrell said he suggested banning cars from Bourbon Street in the past. That idea, he said, met resistance from business owners in the French Quarter.
“We took up an effort to try to look at turning Bourbon Street into a pedestrian mall and making vehicles accessible on Bourbon Street at all,” Morrell said. “There certainly has always been a tension between convenience and security.”
Now, Morrell says city leaders are compelled to reconsider who is allowed to access Bourbon Street and other tourist-centric parts of the Vieux Carré while minimizing the impact on businesses and residents.
“Substantial things are going to have to change with how we deal with the French Quarter,” Morrell said. “There’s going to have to, after all this is said and done, be a conversation on what steps were taken to make sure that Bourbon Street was not easily accessible to vehicles, and obviously based upon what we saw, there weren’t enough steps to make sure that Bourbon Street was not easily accessible to vehicles.”
Related
Related
