Motorcyclists maneuvering between lanes, known as lane-splitting or lane-filtering, is a common sight on congested highways. As drivers inch forward in bumper-to-bumper traffic, motorcyclists often weave through the standstill, prompting mixed reactions from fellow motorists. While convenient for bikers, this practice raises questions about its legality, particularly in Louisiana and Texas.

Lane-Splitting and Lane-Filtering: What’s the Difference?

Before diving into the specifics, it’s important to understand the distinction between lane-splitting and lane-filtering. According to the Ride Apart website, lane-filtering involves a motorcycle overtaking a stopped vehicle by driving between lanes and merging in front of another vehicle. On the other hand, lane-splitting is when a motorcycle rides along the dotted line between two lanes, creating a new lane.

The Legal Landscape in the United States

Nationally, lane-splitting and lane-filtering are largely prohibited. However, several states have begun to legalize these practices. California was the first state to officially legalize lane-splitting in 2016, after decades of “unofficial tolerance.” Utah followed suit in 2019 with a lane-filtering law, and Montana did the same in early 2021. This year, Colorado’s lane-filtering law will take effect in August, and Arizona’s will follow in September. Minnesota plans to implement lane-splitting in January 2025.

Louisiana and Texas: The Legal Status

In Louisiana and Texas, lane-splitting and lane-filtering remain illegal. Both states have stringent traffic laws that do not accommodate these practices, meaning motorcyclists caught riding between lanes can expect to receive a ticket. Enforcement is strict, and drivers are urged to adhere to traditional traffic patterns to avoid penalties.

While some states are progressively adopting lane-splitting and lane-filtering laws to alleviate congestion and enhance traffic flow, Louisiana and Texas have yet to make any moves in this direction. Motorcyclists in these states must remain patient and follow the standard traffic regulations, as any violation will likely result in fines and legal repercussions.

Looking Ahead

As more states experiment with and adopt lane-splitting and lane-filtering laws, Louisiana and Texas could reconsider their stance in the future. For now, however, motorcyclists are advised to comply with current laws and practice caution on the roads.

For more information on where lane-splitting and lane-filtering are legal, visit the full report on Popcrush.

CHALMETTE — When they’re not studying hydraulic systems, electric motors and coastal ecology, the inaugural class of a first-of-its-kind community college program will be diving into a bayou, climbing towers and dangling from ropes more than 50 feet in the air.

This fall, Nunez Community College in Chalmette will launch a two-year program that trains students as entry-level turbine technicians for the growing wind energy sector. Graduates will be equipped to work high in the sky and far out at sea, supporting the development of planned offshore wind farms in the Gulf of Mexico.

“It’s definitely a lot of hands-on training,” said Jacqueline Richard, Nunez’s Coastal Studies Program manager. “It’s very practical because we want to make people as employable as possible.”

Nunez is the first college or university in Louisiana to offer a wind energy-related degree program and the first community college in the Southeast to offer an associate degree focused on wind energy, Richard said.

The program is geared toward young people looking to start a career and experienced workers from the oil and gas industry who may want to broaden their horizons.

“All across the [oil and gas] supply chain, there’s a lot of transferable skills,” said Matheus Chagas, director of renewable energy projects at Grand Isle Shipyard, a Louisiana company that’s long served the oil and gas industry but is expanding into offshore wind. “All the services we’ve deployed for oil and gas can be deployed for offshore wind.”

While Louisiana has long tied its economy and identity to fossil fuel extraction, these resources are finite and job prospects are dwindling. Burning oil and gas also releases greenhouse gases, contributing to sea level rise, intensifying hurricanes and other dangers related to climate change.

“Wind will always be here, whereas fossil fuels will not,” Richard said. “It brings energy to our state in a sustainable way.”

The program offers free tuition to this year’s cohort of 20 students, who could earn well beyond Louisiana’s median income of $50,000 once they graduate.

“Starting pay with this kind of technical diploma is $60,000,” Richard said. “It sets students on a fantastic path with little debt.”

Other Louisiana schools are also offering pathways in the wind energy sector. Late last year, the University of New Orleans announced the first five engineering students in its inaugural Wind Energy Hub scholar program. Each student receives a $5,000 scholarship and a paid internship with German wind energy developer RWE or a Louisiana company that has helped build wind farms or support vessels, such as Edison Chouest Offshore of Cut Off and Keystone Engineering of Mandeville.

Nunez hopes to link its program to UNO’s, allowing two-year degree graduates to seamlessly transition to the larger school and eventually earn a four-year degree.

Dunking and climbing

Courses in the Nunez program range from environmental sciences and technical repair and engineering classes to in-the-field safety trainings that replicate work at onshore and offshore wind farms.

“They’ll be dunked in the water and rescued in Bayou Bienvenue,” Richard said of a water safety course that’s planned near Lake Borgne. “We didn’t want to do it in a crystal clear pool because that’s not what the Gulf of Mexico is like.”

Students will also practice working from heights with ropes and other safety equipment.

Scholarships for the program, which amount to a full ride for the first class, were funded by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Gulf Research Program.

Nunez developed its curriculum with Energy Innovation, a wind energy training and education center in Norway. The center trained and certified Nunez’s instructors in Egersund, Norway late last year.

“Rather than re-create the academic wheel, we decided to partner with someone who has mapped it all out already,” Richard said.

In April, the program passed an audit and inspection by the Global Wind Organization, the top sanctioning body for the wind energy industry. The GWO’s stamp of approval means the program’s graduates will be qualified to enter the wind energy workforce in the U.S. and abroad.

Wind workforce

The U.S.’s first utility-scale offshore wind project started spinning off the coast of New York in March, and two more large projects are under construction near Massachusetts.

The New York wind farm and a few smaller projects on the East Coast amount to about 240 megawatts of offshore wind energy capacity in the U.S.

Federal energy regulators are gearing up for a second offshore lease sale in the Gulf after the first one drew just one bid last year. The winning proposal by RWE aims to build a wind farm near Lake Charles in the coming years. Two smaller wind projects in Louisiana-managed waters, which extend three miles from the coast, are planned near Port Fourchon and Cameron Parish.

The pace of offshore wind construction is far behind the Biden administration’s goal of generating at least 30,000 megawatts by the decade’s end. The reasons are varied: supply chain delays, high interest rates and rising inflation.

A lack of trained workers has also been a factor, according to research by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which recently estimated the U.S.’s offshore wind workforce at less than 1,000 people. To reach the administration’s goals, the industry would need to hire 43,000 more workers and add 33,000 people in support services, according to NREL.

“Skilled trades are some of the most important positions for the offshore wind energy industry,” NREL researcher Jeremy Stefek said. “It represents a pretty big gap that will need to be filled for the industry to grow.”

Louisiana companies with roots in the offshore oil and gas industry have been applying their offshore know-how in the wind industry for nearly a decade. Six Louisiana firms supplied designers, engineers, ship operators and marine welders to help build the U.S.’s first offshore wind farm, a five-turbine project off Rhode Island, in 2016.

Nearly a quarter of all offshore wind work contracts in the U.S. have gone to Gulf-based firms, with about $1 billion in investments flowing to the region’s ship and fabrication yards in recent years, according to the Oceantic Network, an industry trade group.

Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry’s role in Louisiana has been shrinking. The number of oil and gas jobs has been cut by about half over the past decade. The industry now employs less than 2% of the state’s workforce.

Richard said the loss of these good-paying jobs, many of which were accessible to people with little more than a high school diploma, has been painful in many communities, including St. Bernard Parish, where Nunez is based. The parish’s poverty rate has grown from 14% to nearly 23% over the past two decades.

“We’re trying to back pathways to high-earning jobs that don’t require four years of college,” Richard said. “This is a generational investment that our students and maybe some of their kids can take advantage of.”

This article first appeared on Verite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – Louisiana state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 166 during the 2024 legislative session. It cracks down on requirements for labeling domestic and foreign seafood. It means seafood businesses are prohibited from falsely claiming their seafood is domestic.

State Senator Patrick Connick got the bill passed.

Connick points to a recent admission by the popular Biloxi restaurant Mary Mahoney’s Old French House in Biloxi as proof. One of the owners plead guilty to buying over 29 tons of foreign seafood between 2013 and 2019, passing it off to customers as Gulf of Mexico seafood.

“That’s deceptive trade practices,” Connick said. “You’re buying an inferior product you’re putting a quality label on it and you’re lying. “

Todd Percle said he loves catching shrimp in Bayou Segnette.

Percle said fishing hasn’t been easy lately. He can’t sell the shrimp because importers are bringing in shrimp and marketing it as a Louisiana product.

“Can’t get any money for the shrimp anymore,” Percle said.

Percle said those false claims had prevented him from selling shrimp for his desired price.

“It makes the price go down. A lot of shrimpers are selling their boats Because of that. You can’t get the price for the shrimp that you catch.”

The Louisiana Department of Health will enforce this new rule. It also says sellers must display a disclaimer on their menu stating that their product came from outside of the United States.

Connick said this law will take effect in January 2025 and the businesses who violate the rules could face fines up to $2,000.

“They’ll start getting hit with fines and they’re going to change their ways,” he said. “If you want to buy the product you can. We can prevent these products from coming in, but we can prevent them from using our heritage and culture our product when it’s not.”

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