re: Today's Advocate headline, "I-10 widening garners little enthusiasm"

quote:

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A bypass is needed, but there are lower costs projects that can be done to help in the meantime.

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The big problem with this is that the state is in deep budgetary shite. Every $1 per barrel the price of oil drops, the state loses ~$12.5 million in revenue. The new budget was created with ~$61/barrel oil in mind (mainly so they could say the budget was "balanced"). The price is around $40/barrel (meaning that unless something crazy happens to cause the prices to spike, the state is already ~$250 million short on its current budget).

tk;dr - The state won't have the money for multiple projects like this for quite a while.

What this means is that we have to prioritize the projects. To me, the loop is far more important because it could do more than just address the Baton Rouge traffic, but traffic in other parts of the area as well (specifically LA 1 along Plaquemine through Brusly).

While widening the 110-12 corridor would help smooth things out, it would end up being a band-aid about like 10/12's widening to 6 lanes (should have been 8). Here we are just a couple of years out from those projects being finished in EBR and already we see traffic being slowed often, even at non-rush times.

In a nutshell, what widening that corridor will do is what has always been done: playing catch-up, being re-active to traffic problems about 10 years behind.

Putting up a loop would not only channel the traffic out, but putting it in the right place with well-placed arteries would help manage growth by channeling it along pre-determined routes. Going forward like this the state becomes pro-active in addressing traffic instead of woefully reactive.