re: Looks like after the 5 year I-10 widening project is done, traffic times will improve 2%

Yes but did they factor in how many more people will move out of the state by then? Guaranteed to lessen traffic.

when are they expected to close a lane or down to one lane on 10...not sure which one it will be. That will be misery.

Because the problem isn't so much intra-city traffic nor even intra-regional, it's the inter-regional traffic additions we take on. If they had put this much time and effort into a southern loop (with a bridge) allowing pass-through traffic to divert around Baton Rouge (and provide another crossing outside the current bottleneck), interstate traffic within Baton Rouge would likely become a lot more manageable.

Yet still they dicker with just trying to figure out where a new bridge might go.

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So after 5 years of extreme delays and traffic disruptions, you'll save 0.9 minutes on your 45 minute commute.

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Dirty little secret: Increasing lanes of traffic has very little affect on actual traffic.

Traffic engineers know this. Citizens demand more traffic lanes and politicians comply.

The things that decrease traffic are completely different routes and modes of transportation: Loops, bypasses, expressways, mass transit, etc.

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the bottleneck moves elsewhere - either to the bridge itself

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ONLY ONE frickING BRIDGE

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This.

Someone cursed that bridge. The 10 years I lived in Baton Rouge, I would have preferred traffic announcements when there WASN'T a vehicle on fire or an accident on the bridge.

It's unbelievable how many people can't drive in a straight line over that stretch without causing some sort of catastrophe.

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Yet still they dicker with just trying to figure out where a new bridge might go.

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This is a political issue. There’s no real funding for a new bridge. Politicians haven’t committed to funding it saying they need a “complete plan.” Well, a complete plan means the whole thing has to basically be permitted and engineered. But if you get the design work done too far in advance you risk it turning into a complete waste because you couldn’t secure right of way, and someone decided to build a plant in the middle of your route (see: 415 connector).

So what we are left with is this stupid fricking dance where DOTD has to create a bulletproof justification so that it can’t get shot down, have the bulk of the design work done, make sure the permitting is all but guaranteed, and read the political tea leaves so that they can time it just right to avoid having to start over. And they have to do this with all of the other major projects at the same time so that they can tell the politicians where the money is best spent. All of this while also dealing with the local interests / politics involved (NIMBYs and people looking for angles).

Everyone knows that these infrastructure problems will only get worse. Everyone knows that the pain involved with fixing the problems (both cost and inconvenience) will only get worse. Everyone knows there’s not enough highway money to actually fix the problems. But nobody wants to divert funding from elsewhere or raise the gas tax, so the politicians just bury their heads in the sand.

Basically, all the "improvements" will end up making traffic worse.

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