re: I-10 widening project is wreaking havoc

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There's about 37 new subdivisions on Burbank between Gardere and Lee, and most of that was low-lying wetland-type area where water would settle. All I know is all of that water has to go somewhere now that it's displaced by all these goddamn houses (and condos).

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That shite is causing flooding in old neighborhoods that didn't have problems before.

The I-10 widening project is turning into exactly the kind of government-engineered clusterfrick everybody warned about from the beginning. Businesses under the overpasses are flooding, now apparently homeowners are flooding too, and somehow we’re all supposed to sit here and pretend this is just some random coincidence that has absolutely nothing to do with ripping apart the drainage infrastructure around one of the busiest corridors in Louisiana.

You dig up miles of roadway, move dirt everywhere, alter runoff patterns, pour concrete across half the damn city, block natural drainage paths, and then suddenly places that stayed dry for years start taking water. But I’m sure the State will release a 147-page consultant report explaining how this is actually caused by “unexpected rainfall events” or “historic precipitation patterns” instead of admitting they may have screwed something up.

Because God forbid anybody in Louisiana government ever says: “Yeah, maybe we fricked this up.”

And the best part is that residents and business owners are the ones paying the price while the people responsible keep cashing checks and congratulating themselves about “infrastructure investment.”

What genius decided the answer to Baton Rouge traffic was cramming even more lanes directly through the middle of Baton Rouge instead of building a damn interstate loop around the city like every other growing metro area figured out 40 years ago?

Seriously. It’s almost impressive at this point.

Houston has loops. Dallas has loops. Atlanta has loops. Indianapolis has loops. San Antonio has loops. Even smaller cities understood that maybe — just maybe — forcing every human being, every 18-wheeler, every chemical truck, every cross-country traveler, and every commuter directly through the center of the city might become a complete disaster someday.

But not Louisiana. Here, the master transportation strategy seems to be: “Let’s just keep widening the same fricking interstate forever.” What’s the long-term vision here exactly? Twenty lanes through Baton Rouge? Thirty? Are we going to pave over half the city and still act shocked when traffic sucks and flooding gets worse?

Because here’s the reality nobody wants to say out loud: you cannot engineer your way out of bad urban planning by endlessly adding lanes to a corridor that already functions like a clogged artery. Especially not in South Louisiana where the ground is swamp, the drainage is fragile, and one heavy rainstorm already pushes systems to the limit.

And while all this is happening, the people living nearby get treated like collateral damage. What really pisses people off is the complete lack of accountability. If a private company caused this kind of mess, there’d be lawsuits flying immediately. But when government projects appear connected to flooding, suddenly everything becomes vague, slow, and impossible to prove. Everybody starts hiding behind studies, consultants, environmental reviews, engineering jargon, and layers of agencies pointing fingers at each other.

Meanwhile regular people are left wondering why the hell their property suddenly can’t drain correctly anymore.

And you know what’s coming next too. Insurance companies are going to use this as another excuse to jack rates higher. Because of course they will. So residents get hit three times: Tax dollars funding the project. Property damage from the project. Higher insurance because of the project.

The craziest part is that Louisiana acts like these infrastructure problems appeared out of nowhere yesterday. Baton Rouge traffic has been infamous for YEARS. Decades. Everybody knew eventually I-10 and I-12 would become overwhelmed. Everybody knew the bridge bottleneck was a problem. Everybody knew evacuation traffic was dangerous. Everybody knew freight traffic was exploding. But instead of building a true loop system years ago and giving through-traffic a way around the city, leadership just kept kicking the can down the road while developers crammed more growth into the same corridor.

And somehow the official response is basically:
“Please be patient while we make everything worse for the next several years.” At some point people need to stop accepting this nonsense as normal. Louisiana cannot continue operating with this short-sighted patchwork mentality where every problem gets addressed ten years too late with the most disruptive possible solution. We keep waiting until infrastructure completely breaks before anybody acts, and then when they finally do act, the execution turns into another expensive circus that screws over the public.

If this widening project is contributing to flooding — and a hell of a lot of people clearly think it is — then there needs to be real independent investigation and real accountability. Not another internal review where agencies magically conclude they did nothing wrong.

And maybe while they’re at it, somebody should explain why in the year 2026 Baton Rouge STILL doesn’t have a proper interstate loop around the city like this is some kind of experimental concept nobody has ever heard before.

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That shite is causing flooding in old neighborhoods that didn't have problems before.

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This guy understands time of concentration in a watershed!

Eisenhower didn’t want the interstates going through major cities precisely due to these issues.

The short sighted political expediency and deal making for the funding has caused these problems. (And others)

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They probably need another study done to find out why it flooded

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“After an extensive multi-disciplinary study funded millions of dollars of public funding, a team of experts has concluded with high confidence that the flooding event was strongly correlated to large amounts of water falling from the sky and poor drainage.”

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They have to widen it somehow. If they don’t do construction, what else are they supposed to do?

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Access control and removing non ramp signals a minimum of 1 mile from the ramp.

Remove the majority of signals along surface arterial routes (Perkins, Essen and primarily airline). Close the suicide lanes on Perkins and seigan.

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were you shaking when you typed all that out?

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Shaking? I typed that while sitting around bored killing time on election day in Louisiana. People always jump to “u mad” anytime somebody writes more than two sentences because it’s easier than actually responding to the points. Meanwhile you read the whole thing and came back with “were you shaking?” Sounds more like you didn’t have a counterargument.