re: How many of you baws went to the public meeting last night about the new bridge?

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Actually the reason we are in such a mess is they built I-10 right through the middle of downtown BR, through University Lake, backyards all along the route

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What they did in Baton Rouge was no different than anywhere else.

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and finally to the split where they continued to cut through neighborhoods until they crossed Airline Hwy.

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Not quite. The majority of the land along the route from the split to Airline was vacant.
1963 map of the area
1953 map of the area

The only neighborhood it went through was the burgeoning one just south of BRCC (and you can see by the 1953 map that there likely wasn't much out there for the construction to disrupt).

While there was some population out there, growth followed the interstate. Interstates are like the field in Field of Dreams in that if you build it, they (population) will come.

The problem for Baton Rouge traffic comes from a combination of abandoning the grid pattern downtown for more one-entrance neighborhoods as you move farther away from downtown, the utter lack of frontage roads paralleling the interstate and the massive resistance to any roadway expansions (see: the I-10/110 interchange were I-10 gets down to a single lane, Lee, Sherwood north of Old Hammond, Florida east of Airline, the funneling effect of 10/12 going west toward 110 for just roadway expansions, this doesn't even cover things like putting in overpasses to address busy intersections like Old Hammond/Airline or Florida/Sherwood).