To those in charge of the lighting on the New Miss River bridge in BR

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Maybe they are already working on it???

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The studies are being commissioned for repair work scheduled to take place in 2029.

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New Miss River bridge

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The Horace Wilkinson bridge.

Yeah, and have the State Capitol building pressure washed too.

We strategically unscrewed bulbs along the bridge to better frame the nightly car fires.

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2029 is a challenging deadline -- Maybe they could shoot for having it done when the I-10 widening project is finally completed through BR in 2075

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I’ve heard it got pushed back to 2082. Something about doing more studies…

Yeah, and have the State Capitol building pressure washed too.

Yeah, this is what's embarrassing the most.

And while we're at it, I know a project is supposedly in the works, but the River Center is just begging for a make-over. Hadn't changed in forty years seems like.

The bridge is over 60 years old. Can we stop calling it the new bridge?

The “lights” just celebrated their 30th anniversary this past July 4th. Sounds like the issues really began in 2018 when a quarter of them were out. Not sure if they were fully repaired/replaced at that point but there are wiring issues as well and most are currently out.


WBRZ - July 3, 2018

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BATON ROUGE – The iconic shimmer of lights from the New Bridge likely won’t be as shiny when the city celebrates Independence Day – also the 23rd anniversary of the decorative lights casting a brilliant spell over the Mississippi River.

The city, tasked with keeping the lights on after a Baton Rouge civic group raised the money to install them in the early-90s, needs double the budget for light maintenance to get the system working as it should. The city pays $30,000 a year to maintain the lights attached to the superstructure of the I-10 bridge over the river.

But, due to “unforeseen outages,” another $30,000 is needed to get the lights working again.

Forum 35 raised between $275,000 and $350,000 to have 114 lights installed on the Horace Wilkinson Bridge. About a quarter of the lights are out, city officials told WBRZ Tuesday. The lights were turned on July 4, 1995, following WBRZ’s annual fireworks show on the river.

Since, the organization of young professionals has handed the maintenance of the lights over to the city-parish.

A city spokesperson said its contractor found issues with the lights recently.

“We have more problems with the existing lights which will be fixed or replaced,” the city said.

The additional $30,000 – which will expand the contract to a total of $60,000 – should help.

The Metro Council will be asked to approve the money shuffle at the July 25th meeting.

But, that’s only a band-aid. The entire system needs to be retooled.

Until the broken parts are fixed, numerous bulbs won’t shine – leaving dark holes in the light display on the bridge.

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Wasn’t starting to crumble a few years ago and that led to the closure of the 48 steps and the main entrance for a while.

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Yep, among other issues. Addressing that is why it's all cordoned off by fencing and stuff now.

From my understanding, not only is the limestone in need of some TLC, but the underlying concrete and steel around the observation deck has a lot of wear and tear (anyone who has been up there in the last 5 years could see where the concrete was crumbling inside the store area).

The project is going to bring in three big cranes to remove, lower, treat and then replace each piece of limestone. While this is going on, any of the underlying concrete and steel in the exterior walls which needs some repair work will be handled at that time. Once they get below the observation deck and into the level of offices, they'll do 3-4 floors at a time, with the workers on those floors being re-housed somewhere else until their floors are done.

It's all supposed to start next month. During all of this, the state capitol will still be open for session, tours, etc. but all access is going to be through the eastern legislative chamber (at least that was the last I heard).

Any way we can get some stripes on the roadways while we're at it?
So many roads around BR, you can barely see the lines or flat out not at all. And this is when its not raining. Even worse when its raining.