re: Government Street 'road diet' results: more business, less traffic

You do realize North dead-ends at Foster, right?

Government is the ONLY surface street that runs from downtown to Jefferson Highway. Florida is the ONLY surface street that connects downtown to Airline.
Government is the only other option besides Florida to get even close to airline via Lobdell/Goodwood.

Restricting capacity in that spot was bad, but that’s because Baton Rouge’s urban planning is abysmal. Magazine works because of the neighborhood’s density and the abundance of alternative routes. Baton Rouge has neither of those things. Government Street also lacks aesthetic architecture or shade, and the road diet did nothing to address either of those issues.

In addition, I don’t hate government or midcity. I live there. I just think the road diet plan was poorly planned and implemented, and that they’re spiking the football over economic growth that was already underway. I think the city busses not having spots to pull over is a HUGE problem, and 5:00pm traffic between S. 22nd st and Foster is abysmal. The medians were also built incorrectly and the greenery is horribly maintained. The street really would benefit from some shade trees. The bike lanes are also a poor use of that space because there are parallel bike lanes for most of that stretch on Capitol Heights one block over. That valuable real-estate could have gone to trees, parallel parking, or pull-overs for city busses.

It sure would be great if their was a portion of Baton Rouge that had high population density, walkability, great grocery stores and restaurants, easy accessibility from the rest of town, short commutes to nearby employers, and reasonably affordable housing, but Baton Rouge simply isn’t laid out that way, and attempts at astroturfing this sort of environment in the middle of a commuter/suburban style community don’t work because they feel like isolated islands of faux urbanism.

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Also, there is street parking on the neighborhood streets.

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Really? Do you think residential neighborhoods ifc government welcome a plethora of parked cars?

Of course not

The owners are asking way too much for it.

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less traffic

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is not the same as

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reduced the number of traffic incidents on the street

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Because the opposite of less traffic occured:

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Traffic counts on Government Street were 12% higher in 2022 than they were in 2017,

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There have just been less wrecks with the center turn lanes.

Probably 20-30 new liquor licenses account for the increased revenue. Add bike lanes for impaired driver challenge. Recipe for trouble.

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Government is the ONLY surface street that runs from downtown to Jefferson Highway

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Take Lobdell to connect to Florida.

The rest of your traffic/travel problems can be solved by taking north, either to downtown or to foster and then either left turn to Florida or right turn to government and go whichever way you please. Maybe it’s just bc I live between Government and North that I have no problem traversing down North or Florida if need be.

I will agree that no shade is a problem and the median greenery shouldn’t even have been a thing, just a turn lane all the way down.

I've recently lived in old goodwood and capital heights. It's great. Government St between Jefferson and Lobdell looks awesome, love driving down there. The Stretch Between Acadian and Jefferson has nice parts and has run down looking parts, but something new seems to open up every month. I'd say it is a successful project and will continue to get better. I never have to leave the area or travel south of the interstate. Easy to get to grocery stores, restaurants, bars, home depot, and most of the schools in town. Not sure where all of these people are driving to, but I bet a lot of them are making unnecessary trips during rush hour traffic.

Ground is very high over there and doesn't flood. I travel down Florida to go to work and it moves well. Definitely see lots of homeless folk on Florida, but haven't had any encounters with them. There's a lot of parking at most of these places, I don't think it needs street parking.

it sure worked for fluer de lis

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Baton Rouge has a totally different mindset when it comes to pedestrian friendly and public transportation

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Lived in Baton Rouge 2007-2009. It is the least pedestrian friendly place I’ve ever lived in by far. No sidewalks anywhere, every neighborhood is a no outlet development, congested roads lined with drainage ditches and dead possums. Bikers regularly getting blasted to death on river road.

Just an awful place. 2007 LSU season mostly redeemed it.