re: Veterans, Metairie developments

The problem with Baton Rouge is there are no shortcuts.

In Metaire or Kenner and need to get to New Orleans? and Interstate is stuck?
You can take Airline, Earhart, or even West Esplanade to Carrolton(not THE Carrolton) Hammond Highway to Robert E LEE, Mirabeau, (Lakeview, Gentilly, etc)

There are not loops, but there are options, and with those options there are side streets.

Take Baton Rouge.

You are on Siegen and need to get Downtown and 1-10 is a parking lot. You can take Airline (clusterfrick sometimes) to Florida, to downtown but if you look at it, you are going way out of your way. So on a map you take the more direct route.
Which would be Burbank or Perkins, but both bottleneck. Then you have to drive through campus.

So there is no real way to avoid traffic in that scenario.

Plus when you do have roads you can take the side streets do not parallel the roads or you are limited on routes.
Baton Rouge has a strange layout. A loop would have solved a lot of problems, btw.