re: Dedicated passenger train from Baton Rouge to New Orleans "3-5 years away"

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Airport parking is probably more expensive than a train ride. Parking in NOLA is probably more expensive than a train ride. The bigger question is definitely who's going to take the train back to Baton Rouge other than Baton Rougeans returning home? Downtown business meetings and LSU sports only goes so far. For this to be successful that corridor would really have to grow. Maybe if they built that big airport in between BR and NOLA they're always talking about it would work out. Then you get traffic from both cities using it regularly, even if it's only for half the line.

Regarding the horror of mass transit for southerners, it's all about being useful. Does the proposed commuter train really seem less dangerous or filled with fewer unwashed masses than the French Quarter you're taking the train to?

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The plan has stops in Gonzalez and around OLOL in BR. So if (big if) BR improves CATS and/or builds the streetcars or BRT (I like BRT because they are a 1/3rd the price and offer all the benefits) then communters could ride it. If it is like other communter rail options Gonzalez to BR would cost about $4 dollars one way and take about 20 minutes of sitting in a comfortable train car with wifi and not stuck in your car in BR traffic. Also if the BR station is placed on government street the only thing that woulc have to be built is a switch and connecting segment and the line could be extended all the way to Hammond along the Union Pacific line.

The communter rail plan is realistic if BR and the other communities improve their mass/public transportation to feed into it. There are several examples of communter rail in cities with a population simialr to the combined NOLA & EBR population. The NOLA-BR line would be the longest, but there is also plenty of economic activity along the route that other lines don't have.

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Just a quick question to anyone who wants to answer? Do yall remember how much the North Blvd overpass cost? When this plan was first unveiled last year I was looking at the map of the route and Government street, College Dr, and Essen would need overpasses to minimize impact of increased traffic if the trains ever go to a full demand schedule (train leaving every 30 minutes). I was just trying to get a rough ballpark figure of how expensive that would be. thanks

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North Boulevard cost $16.4 million. If one were to extrapolate that across 3 other similar projects (College, Essen, and Government Street), that would be a total expense of about $50 million.

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it's needed

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Not really.

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It's wanted

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Debatable. Maybe by the politicians waiting for there kickbacks.

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It's overdue

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No it's really not.

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It WILL happen.

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I hope not. Huge waste of money.

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Replacing the 1.8-mile wooden rail bridge across the Bonnet Carre Spillway, where trains now crawl at 10 mph,

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seemed longer than 1.8 miles to me.

When I was a kid I took a passenger train ride from BR to NO and back. They quit providing train service for a reason. It lost money.

A new service won't stand on its own no matter how much money Obama plugs into the construction. It's all social engineering, big govt, and not capitalism.

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Ppl that know what the f**k they are talking about much more than you. It is a COMMUTER rail and so the majority of its ridership will be commuters and gameday, weekend riders, etc will be secondary. If the ridership is ever there they can easily add an express train that goes from CBD to Mid-City BR with one stop at MSY that will take about an hour.

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No one has yet answered the question... How are people going to get around BR once they get off the train? The public transportation system in BR is absolute garbage.

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No one has yet answered the question... How are people going to get around BR once they get off the train? The public transportation system in BR is absolute garbage.

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Too lazy to use google and find the plan?

the FuturEBR plan is designed with the railroad in mind. It has plans for a downtown-LSU streetcar/BRT and atreet/BRT along either Government or Florida. It also includes plans for an improved CATS system.

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it's needed


Not really.

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It's wanted


Debatable. Maybe by the politicians waiting for there kickbacks.

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I want it. I'm not a politician. I just hate traffic. Having this option would make it much easier to see my family in Gonzales as well as head down to New Orleans to have fun or fly out of MSY. I could be in Gonzales in less than 30 minutes when traffic snarles will make it take an hour or more.

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It's overdue


No it's really not.

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It really is. As tied together as this region is, we need more transportation avenues to move back and forth.

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It WILL happen.


I hope not. Huge waste of money.

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It's expensive, but I believe it to be a very worthwhile project, and just the start to something much bigger and better. What I envision is a commuter rail network in South Louisiana with stops all along 190 that would connect Houston, Beaumont, Lake Charles, Lafayette, Baton Rouge, Denham Springs, Walker, Hammond, Covington, and Slidell.

You would have the Northshore Express which would run from Slidell to Baton Rouge

The Ponchetrain Express would Make a loop around the lake with stops in Covington, Hammond, La Place, Kenner, Metairie, New Orleans CBD, New Orleans Bywater, and Slidell.

Then there would be the Oil Line which is an express train with stops only in New Orleans CBD, MSY, downtown BR, Lafayette, Lake Charles, Beaumont, and Houston.

Finally, the current River Queen Line of downtown BR, OLOL, Blue Bayou/Dixie Landin' (potential future stop), Gonzales, LaPlace, MSY, Zephyr, CBD

The main stations for transfers would be Downtown BR (Oil Line, River Queen Line, Northshore Express), Hammond, LaPlace, MSY, and CBD

In the future, there would also be a Westbank "Chem" Express that would have stops in Downtown BR and Exxon before crossing the Old Bridge, then Port Allen (there would be shuttles from this stop to surrounding plants and major facilities funded through partnerships with local employers), Dow, Plaquemine, Donaldsonville (more shuttles), Vacherie, Taft, Luling, Avondale, and then reconnect with the River Queen Line at MSY after going over the Huey P. That would be great for plant workers. I can only imagine how many people in BR would take that to avoid sitting in Bridge traffic trying to get home from Dow.

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I might be an old fogey, but a trolley between LSU and downtown BR seems like a boondoggle unless the developers in between LSU and downtown really put things in high gear.

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Someone must be living under a rock. The gentrification of Nicholson is in full swing. Google "Nicholson Gateway Baton Rouge"

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They have park and ride now, but few people use it. Instead of trains people park and ride the bus to NO, they park and ride the bus from BR suburbs to downtown BR too. At least they did. I don't know if they still offer these services or not because there wasn't a whole lot of interest.

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They still do. Ridership is increasing, but busses suffer from the same problem as motorists, the busses and cars have to endure the same traffic and clogged lanes. Trains get to skip all of that.

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First of all you are talking about two different problems. How would a train from NO to BR and back do much of anything for BR traffic.

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The stops at OLOL and Gonzales would do more than almost any loop concept out there at getting commuters off the interstate. Throw in one more stop near Blue Bayou and you get a TON of cars off the road.

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How many New Orleanians commute to BR every day? Some, but enough to take a dent off BR traffic? I don't think so.

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Not a ton of New Orleanians going to BR, true. However, there's a ton of people around Gonzales and LaPlace going to New Orleans. Lots of people from Baton Rouge going to New Orleans for business, fun, or flights. Lots of people from New Orleans going to BR for sporting events. Not to mention the massive numbers of people in Kennahbrah and Metairie who work in the CBD. This would serve them as well.

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Now a rail line from parts of EBR, Livingston, and Ascension would do more good, but that would require several rail lines from say Walker to BR, Gonzales to BR and these lines would have to interconnect to downtown BR, the hospital corridor, LSU, etc. Just running a train from NO to BR(downtown/midcity) doesn't do much even if it stopped in Gonzales.

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Rail that traverses downtown to LSU is in the works. Rail that goes across Mid City to BRCC and Independence Park is farther down the road, but in the planning stages.

Just as the tracks already exist heading to New Orleans, tracks to LP and the Northshore already exist. I'm sure a lot of folks in Denham and Walker would love to avoid the clusterf&%k that is I-12 to skip straight to the heart of the city.

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All this train talk avoids the big problem. What to do with I-10 in downtown BR. It's horrific and the design is crazy. One lane, good entrances and exits, no shoulders, etc. create a huge bottleneck that has been tolerated for way too long and needs to be corrected.

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This isn't an either/or, this is an AND. The problem with upgrading the interstate is real estate. There's not enough land currently to expand to fit what is needed. It gets extremely expensive (both financially and politically) trying to purchase land, displace people, and displace businesses in order to add more capacity to our interstates. It needs to be done, absolutely, but adding a rail option would certainly be helpful to say the least.

We don't just need rail. We don't just need improvements to the Bridge.

We need rail AND improvements to the bridge AND a loop. It's expensive AND necessary.