BATON ROUGE – Visitors is an on a regular basis headache for the residents of Baton Rouge. A number of tasks are being finished by DOTD to assist remedy the town’s congested roadways, together with a brand new Mississippi River Bridge.
“We now have a 3 pronged method for coping with site visitors in Baton Rouge. Considered one of which is to widen I-10 by means of city. Second is a south bridge and third is a north bypass. We’re centered on the I-10 widening undertaking and the south bridge as soon as these are underway we’ll look into the north bypass,” DOTD Secretary Eric Kalivoda mentioned.
The bridge comes with a large price ticket of $1.5 billion {dollars}. Thus far the undertaking has obtained $300 million in state funds funding. Nevertheless, the funds alone won’t cowl the price of the bridge.
“Will probably be a toll bridge and people tolls are anticipated to generate from $250-300 million, so we do have a good sum of money. It isn’t sufficient to do the entire thing but it surely’s an excellent place to begin,” Kalivoda mentioned.
The undertaking has been narrowed down to 3 potential websites for the bridge and is at the moment within the environmental impression section to find out which website is the most secure and only route.
“These must undergo intensive environmental analysis earlier than narrowing it right down to what’s referred to as the popular different. Throughout the subsequent 12 months we’ll have a most popular different recognized after which we are able to go forward and full the environmental course of and transfer on to implementation,” Kalivoda mentioned.
The environmental impression of one of many proposed websites is drawing concern from residents of Iberville Parish like Laura Comeaux. She says that one of many websites would put her cypress forest in danger.
“I am hoping that once they get boots on the bottom and actually do the environmental assessment, that they see this forest for themselves and determine to get rid of it as one of many three choices and to think about the general public’s opinion and the non-public landowner as extremely as they do the business,” Comeaux mentioned.
A location for the bridge is anticipated to be selected by the Summer season of 2024.