re: What specific projects could alleviate traffic in Baton Rouge and New Orleans?

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I'd be happy with just adding a left turn lane at Nicholson/Brightside.

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Isn't EBR being taxed to widen Nicholson in that area?

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I think the plan is to change the Washington street exit to a left hand ramp before the merge point with I-10, then route the exiting traffic underneath the freeway for about 1/8th of mile.

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This is a complete waste of money for corrupt political reasons.

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This is a complete waste of money for corrupt political reasons.

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I honestly don't see why the exit is needed anyway.

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I'd be happy with just adding a left turn lane at Nicholson/Brightside.

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That's coming in the near future.

The only part of New Orleans that sucks is coming in from Baton Rouge where veterans merges from the left lane. After the airport.

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Honestly, how does it make that much of a difference with the Dalrymple exit nearby?

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The Dalrymple exit is not the problem. Regardless of the name, it is the Street, with the WB exit lane that starts before the I110-I10 merge, that needs to go. It just happens to be the Washington St. Exit. I dont know the history, but I am assuming that the Washington St. Exit was built first, back in the day.

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I dont know the history, but i am assuming that the Washington St. Exit was built first, back in the day.

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Yes. They took the minimum amount of land needed to build the freeways back then. The guy that fricked up that design has probably long passed away.

It's kind of astounding that the I-10 freeway decking between the bridge and College in Baton Rouge has never been widened in the 70 years it has been there. What you see today is the same narrow structure they built when they first installed I-10.

There were 200,000 people in the Baton Rouge metro area back then. There's 850,000 now.

Bridge between Addis and Plaquemine and an expressway connecting 415 to the new bridge

NOLA's needs really aren't that bad. The traffic bottlenecks in Metairie on I-10 near Causeway, but really isn't that terrible most of the time. In NOLA, the grid makes traffic only bad during big events, at 5:00pm on Carrolton and on Canal and Poydres, and around areas that are massively under construction.

New Orleans has plenty of road capacity and redundancy, but it's streets are in absolutely deplorable condition, making many impassable. New Orleans just needs to spend massive quantities of money rebuilding its streets from the sub-base on up and repaving and patching all of the potholes. They should overhaul the sewer and water system at the same time, as leakage in those systems massively contribute to the sinkholes.

In New Orleans, there's very little that can be done about the bottleneck at Metairie. The only option that seems to be available is light rail. The New Orleans streetcar lines are great for navigating around the city, but they don't tae you to the airport. Thus, every traveler has to drive, uber, or take a cab to the airport. If rail service was available connecting the streetcars to the airport, it would take a significant number of cars off of that stretch.

Baton Rouge has the opposite problem, it's streets are in pretty good condition (with the exception of Government Street which would still be among the smoothest streets if it were in NOLA), but there is a massive lack of capacity and almost zero redundancy. The streets do not connect, and there are very limited numbers of ways to get from East to West or from North to South. There are only 3 roads out of town to the east (Greenwell Springs, Florida, & I-12), 2 roads to the west (I-12 and 190), 5 to the south (Perkins, I-10, Jefferson, Airline, and 30) but nearly all of those condense into each other at different points (I-10, and Perkins at Highland; Airline and Jefferson by Parkview), and 3 to the north (Plank, Scenic, and Airline).

Traffic isn't bad going north, but it is hell trying to cross the 3 rivers that border it on all other sides (Mississippi, Amite, and Bayou Manchac). To aleviate these issues, BR needs the following:
1. Flip the Washington Street exit to the opposite side of I-10 at the 10/110 Split. Most of the traffic exiting on Washington Street comes from 110, and the resulting cars having to merge left immediately off of the bridge combined with the southbound off 110 cars merging right to get to the off-ramp causes a lot of accidents and backups.

2. Add a lane of traffic Eastbound I-10 from Washington Street to College Drive. This would eliminate the bottleneck of all Eastbound bridge traffic having to condense to 1 lane because the lane for Washington Street is exit only.

3. A new Mississippi River Bridge between Plaquamine and the I-10 Bridge. This would take the DOW traffic off of the I-10 bridge and off of the LA-1 Intracoastal Canal Bridge. This would result in a huge reduction in backups trying to get on and off the I-10 bridge as well as reduce stress on the Sunshine Bridge.

4. Extend LA-415 over the Intracoastal Canal to intersect with LA-1 near the new Plaquamine bridge. This would provide an alternate route over the canal, reduce traffic massively on LA-1, and provide the western loop to get cars from I-10 to the Plaquamine Bridge.

5. Add at least one new bridge over the Amite at S. Harrels Ferry, Monitor, and/or Tiger Bend to Connect with 4-H Club Road.

6. Make LA 30 4 lanes with left turn lanes from Burbank all the way to Airline Highway in Ascension Parish.

7. Make Airline Highway 6 lanes with turn lanes the entire length from at least 190 (preferably I-110) to Gonzales.

8. Build I-10 exits and onramps at Pecue Lane, Perkins/Bluff Road, and an additional dedicated exit at Tanger just for either plant traffic or outlet mall traffic, also connecting Boudreaux Road with Robert Wilson Road.

9. Make LA 70 4 lanes between 22 and the Sunshine Bridge.

10. Make LA 22 4 lanes with a left turn lane between LA 70 and I-10

11. Create a controlled access loop highway between Plaquamine bridge and I-10 on the East Bank of the River which then crosses the Amite and meets up with I-12 near Walker, and eventually wraps around the north to Airline near I-110.

12. Commuter rail system linking Baton Rouge and New Orleans with stops at BTR, Downtown, LSU, BR Hospital District (between Essen and Bluebonnet), Blue Bayou, Gonzales, LaPlace, MSY, Zephyr, and NOLA CBD and the NOLA Streetcar. It doesn't have to necessarily stop at all of these places, but it should at least have stops where one could connect with a train that takes one to these places. It could even potentially expand to eventually include train service to the northshore or even Biloxi.

I'm sure there's more that could be done, but that 20 billion worth of work would be a nice start.