More Mardi Gras Parade Routes?

I don’t know about you, but I’m already counting down the days to Mardi Gras 2014. I can’t wait to take out my old Schwegmann or K&B shopping to collect beads and my favorite throws from the krewes parading down St. Charles Avenue.

Currently, almost all of the New Orleans krewes travel through Uptown and the CBD along the St. Charles Avenue parade route. With the addition of the krewes moving over from the West Bank, it’s almost thirty krewes that use that route.

It’s just a handful of parades that travel through other parts of the city. The only major Mardi Gras krewes that don’t use the St. Charles Avenue route are Krewe du Vieux and Krewe Delusion that march through the Marigny and the Krewe of Endymion that travels along Canal Street through Mid-City.

It wasn’t too long ago that the parades were spread throughout the city. You could see parades traveling up Carrollton, along Jefferson Davis Parkway and through neighborhoods like Freret Street. Instead of parading through Uptown, the krewe of Mid-City paraded through Mid-City. Krewe of Ponchartrain started near the lake of the same name in Gentilly.

However, to keep costs down and stay on the city’s good side, many of the krewes pooled their resources and moved to the St. Charles Avenue parade route or faded away into history. Paying for the police to monitor the crowds and control the traffic, as well as paying for the streets to cleaned after the parade can get expensive. Even the charges for the barricades add up, so the krewes looked for way to save money and consolidating parade routes was a way to do that.

Now, city officials are considering routes in other parts of the city again. Possible plans include increasing the number of parades through Mid-City or it could go as far as returning the neighborhood krewes back to their neighborhoods.