A sinkhole opened up on Canal Street April 29, 2016, near a tunnel running underneath Harrah's Casino
© Robert McClendon/The Times-PicayuneA sinkhole opened up on Canal Street April 29, 2016, near a tunnel running underneath Harrah's Casino
A sinkhole that opened up at the foot of Canal Street Friday (April 29) will take up to six months and $5 million to repair, city officials said.

The collapse, which caved in a 30-foot-wide section of one of New Orleans busiest streets, happened just a few feet away from the spot where Mayor Mitch Landrieu and his infrastructure team had been standing hours earlier in a 50 year-old tunnel that runs underneath the road.

The team was on site to inspect one of the tunnel's walls, which had begun to buckle earlier this month, allowing water to spill in. A few hours after they left, the wall collapsed, taking the road along with it.

"This is nothing short of incredible," Landrieu said. "Unfortunately, it's not a surprise," given the city's creaking infrastructure and unstable soil, he said. "Still, I've never seen anything like it."



The tunnel was constructed in the 1960s as part of an abandoned plan to build a six-lane, elevated Riverfront Expressway that would have run alongside the French Quarter, connecting Elysian Fields Avenue to the West Bank. The expressway never happened, but the idea wasn't scrapped until after the city had already built the tunnel section, which runs between Canal and Poydras streets.

On the Uptown side of Canal Street, which runs directly over the tunnel, tour buses continued to trundle along as normal. On the downtown side, visitors gawked at the crumbling pit that had opened up at the tunnel's northern end.

Officials said repairs will begin immediately, but it's possible the sinkhole could continue to grow. The tunnel itself, part of which has been converted into valet parking for Harrah's Casino, was not thought to be in immediate danger, they said.