Lafayette Media Editorial: Lafayette‘s I-49 Connector is a delusion

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I have bad news for anyone who supports the I-49 Connector: There‘s no reason to believe that it‘s ever going to get fully funded under any realistic timeline.

I‘m not saying that as a general complaint about the slowness of government. I mean that as a simple statement of fact based on my analysis of the feasibility of securing sufficient funding over any amount of time.

Part of the problem is that the costs keep skyrocketing. The earliest estimate I could find was $750 million, from the state‘s own 2015 Statewide Transportation Plan. When I last wrote about this project in 2024, the estimate was $2 billion. This summer, Mayor-President Monique Boulet raised the bar again to $2.5 billion, despite a new concept that is already designed to be cheaper than earlier ones.

And this total will only increase over the years as inflation keeps compounding. By the time anything might actually get built, the bill could easily hit $3-4 billion or higher, depending on how long this all draws out.

The state of Louisiana spends $1-1.2 billion per year on its highway/bridge capital program. But most of that money goes to preservation, operations and safety. That leaves only about $250 million per year to fund new projects like the I-49 Connector.

So the state would have to dedicate 100% of its funding for new highway projects statewide for a span of up to two decades to pay for this one project. That would mean not funding other state projects, like a new bridge over the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge or the other I-49 Connector up in Shreveport, another billion dollar project, which has received vocal support from Shreveport congressman and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

Even the funding mechanism created specifically for projects like this one—the Megaprojects Leverage Fund—caps out at $40 million a year. At that rate, it could take 100 years before there‘s enough money. And that account is currently zeroed out entirely through next year, with the money redirected instead to the new bridge in Lake Charles.

The state doesn‘t have to fund this entirely on its own, though. It‘s a federal highway, so federal money can help share the load. But federal money is often competitive against other projects in the state and across the country.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act created a bonanza of federal spending on infrastructure over the last five years, giving Louisiana almost $200 million more per year to spend on highways. But Lafayette‘s I-49 Connector got none of that money, instead receiving a one-time 2021 COVID relief allocation that predated IIJA entirely for the interchange at Kaliste Saloom Road.

Now the IIJA is running out of money, and Congress hasn‘t acted to extend it, so funding is likely to decrease in the short-term. And long-term, funding is uncertain in terms of both amounts and criteria for the kinds of projects that are more likely to receive support.

Even if the state made the I-49 Connector in Lafayette its top priority for state and federal funding, it‘s unlikely that there‘ll be enough money available in the state and federal budget to keep up with rising costs.

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Though no one‘s admitted it out loud yet, that means this project will probably require either local financing or private funding, which means more taxes or tolls.

The only reason the new bridge in Lake Charles eventually moved forward was because half the money‘s coming from private financing paid for by tolls.

Even that comparison goes only so far, though. Lake Charles can toll because it‘s a captive river crossing with no free alternative. The I-49 Connector would run directly above a free surface street, so even flawless execution would face real diversion risk that Lake Charles doesn‘t.

And the companies behind that private financing and toll operations are currently overseeing a mess in Plaquemines Parish, where their Belle Chasse Bridge and Tunnel project has suffered from faulty construction and overcharging for tolls. It‘s gotten bad enough that Governor Jeff Landry had to step in and suspend tolling last year.

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The other option for additional funding would be to create a new taxing authority like The Capital Area Road and Bridge District, which consists of the five parishes around the Mississippi River bridge in Baton Rouge. This was created back in 2018 and has yet to settle on a fundraising plan.

But any new tax would require a public vote to approve. Given that Lafayette‘s been voting down renewals of existing taxes for libraries and fire protection in recent years, it‘s hard to believe that we‘d be willing to vote for a new tax to fund the I-49 Connector. And it‘s implausible to believe that other parishes would join in.

So where all this leads me is to the conclusion that the I-49 Connector is dead in the water — because there doesn‘t appear to be a path toward securing enough funding to outrun inflation to ever finish it.

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