Sorry Baton Rouge: Lake Charles gets a new river bridge first, DOTD officials say

That bridge is so bad. It needs to be replaced 50 years ago.

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I would like to note that the Old Bridge in Baton Rouge is 81 years old. Just saying

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Oh well... I can just imagine the shitshow traffic would be for 20 years while this thing is being built. Let them have their bridge.

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A key legislative panel Thursday gave state transportation leaders the authority to pursue a new bridge of up to $800 million

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I feel like they’ll screw this up somehow.

Or they pretty much totally redid the Huey P you almost can't recognize it from before.

What are they going to do add a second span like the GNO, that bridge has traffic, but nothing like the new bridge in Baton rouge or the GNO.

Biden probably thinks those pistols are confederate-looking and don’t pass the smell test.

The study and panels have been done

This is the green light to start pursuing bids to begin construction.

I wish Lafayette had a bridge.

Looks like Lake Chuck has its act together and is embracing tolls. It is public private partnership.

Also construction still has years to go. According to the article, they still had to do further environmental studies and decide upon 15 possible reroutes.

I know these projects take awhile to do but I have been hearing what they wanted to do for the bridge for years, and even saw conceptual reroutes and plans, you cannot tell me that a full construction start time table is still 4 years away.

I understand that these studies need to be done, but there has to be a faster way from design, acceptance, financing, and construction.

The longer these projects wait to be built the higher the costs.

Projects like the LA 1 toll bridge in Leeville had a certain cost estimate, but by the time the project was submitted for bids they came back way over budget. The state then had to piece meal the project wasted another 2 years to find additional funding and costs nearly doubled. That is why at first there were those nasty curves at when it first opened. DOTD had plans for full expressway like exchanges but the costs were too high and they opted for at grade intersections on a bridge in the middle of the water.

If memory serves me right, DOTD secured about 150-200 million for the first section which was to go between Leeville and Fourchon as a single project. The bids came back at around 250 million. Note: when DOTD put it out for bid, it was after Hurricane Ivan, but before Katrina.

After Katrina was when they started breaking up that first phase into parts: span over bayou Lafourche, approaches to span and access roads to new center span, section to Fourchon, and toll facilities.

Luckily, they were able to find additional money and finish all the sections of that first phase but instead of the estimated 160 million initial estimates, they spent over 300 million just on that first section.

Had DOTD have some funding flexibility and taken the initial bid, we could have had a bridge sooner that cost less.

Everybody will sign off on a Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) where the Private Partner will pay for, build, and maintain the bridge in exchange for a reasonable and pre-agreed return on their investment (tolls), but when the general public and their reps in BR discover the Private Partner is making a reasonable profit by collecting tolls, the shite will hit the fan. You'll hear terms like "enriching themselves", "lining their own pockets", and "back-room deals". Petty jealousies will eventually deep-six this project. Just pull up a chair and get your popcorn ready.



Cut off nose/spite face.