Imagine a Nicholson Drive four lanes wide from American Mart to Walk-On’s with bike lanes and widened sidewalks flanking the heavily trafficked stretch of road. Envision turning lanes in all four directions at the intersection of Nicholson and Brightside drives. Think about more efficient light timing cycles to help shorten the line of cars that regularly backs up southward hundreds of feet past Ben Hur Road, as well as hundreds of feet westward down Brightside during peak traffic hours. That daydream is only a few years away from becoming reality, according to David Guillory, interim director of Public Works for the city. As part of Baton Rouge’s Green Light Plan to alleviate roadways and abate citywide traffic issues, Nicholson will undergo two separate construction projects beginning in fall 2013. Construction at the notoriously gridlocked intersection of Brightside and Nicholson could begin as early as October 2013, Guillory said. The second project expanding Nicholson from Brightside to Gourrier Avenue still has a few years of planning and fundraising before orange cones and steamrollers swarm the roadways. “This is directly related to the congestion in that area,” Guillory said. “There’s a lot of traffic, as anyone who travels it knows.” Davis Dicharry, owner of Brew-Bacher’s Grill, sat on a bar stool on a rainy afternoon last week and pointed to a seemingly endless stream of cars in both directions down Nicholson. “Every day I watch traffic sit like this from 2 p.m. until about 6:30,” he said. “You get one guy turning left [from Nicholson] and the light goes a whole cycle without anyone being able to turn.” Dicharry has weathered construction before at his three other Baton Rouge Brew-Bacher’s locations. For the Bluebonnet Road location, the addition of two lanes and a median on Bluebonnet between Perkins Road and Burbank Drive several years ago made traffic a nightmare for about a year. But business has grown ever since, thanks in part to the lane expansion, he said. “The short-term effects of the project don’t outweigh the long-term benefit of what happens,” he said. John Nguyen, owner of American Mart on the corner of Nicholson and Lee Drive agreed. “Accidents happen all the time,” he said. He talked about the daily traffic backlog in front of his store on Nicholson and said he believes expansion will ultimately be good for both his business and residents in the area. The reported average daily traffic for the intersection was about 25,000 cars in 2009, said John Snow, who works as a liaison between the city and the project engineers. By 2029, that number is expected to rise by about 50 percent, he said. According to estimates from a 2009 traffic study, there were about 28,000 cars per day three years ago on Nicholson from Brightside to Gourrier. That number is expected to double by 2030. The two projects cost about $35 million total, which is mainly funded by a half-cent sales tax voters passed in 2005 for the Green Light Plan, Snow said. The intersection project is currently in the right-of-way phase, which involves the city purchasing privately owned land needed to begin construction, Snow said. Guillory said no businesses will be closed or moved as a result of the acquisitions. Since Nicholson is a state road with a railroad and many utilities, hashing out the funding and construction details is time-consuming and tricky, Guillory said. “Anyone who goes through [the intersection] once we finish is going to see a tremendous decrease in wait time,” he said. ____ Contact Ben Wallace at [email protected]