Streets around Baton Rouge certainly are not the most user-friendly, three challengers to Mayor-President Kip Holden’s re-election bid agreed Tuesday night.The University hosted the forum, in the Energy, Coast and Environment Building, to a relatively small audience. Members of the Baton Rouge Bike Club and the Baton Rouge Sierra Club were also present. The three challengers — Republican Wayne Carter, Democrat and former School Board member Ron Johnson, and former state legislature auditor and Republican Dan Kyle, who taught at the University for 23 years — were asked to address urban growth and development, intracity mobility and regional traffic.Each took turns denouncing Holden’s policies in office. They most frequently criticized his $989 million tax proposal.”We had enough of a surplus to take care of some of the infrastructure needs addressed in the billion-dollar plan, but they were put on the shelf,” Johnson said.Carter and Johnson agreed the need for “complete streets” — streets that provide for multiple transportation choices including walking and biking — was essential and that developers should be required to build sidewalks and bicycle paths. “It’d be wonderful to have complete streets, but first we need to have the traffic off of our local streets,” Kyle said.Candidates tossed around many solutions, including adding more speed bumps and monitors, installing battery-powered backups at stoplights, and widening entire sections of the I-10 and I-12. The candidates also criticized the downtown development plan.”Kip Holden spent $10 million on synchronizing lights downtown,” Carter said. “Instead, get out on the Perkins, the Bluebonnets, the Lees and the Essens and fix the lights there.”The three candidates described themselves as fiscal conservatives adamantly opposed to tax increases and proposed some large-scale changes to the current system. “We need other major arteries and frontage roads,” Johnson said.The candidates agreed a major overhaul was necessary to fix the city’s notorious traffic problem. “We have the spirit; we have the heart; we have the passion,” Johnson said. “If we can get 90,000 people in and out of Tiger Stadium, we can get workers through the city each day,” Kyle said. – – – -Contact Charles Schully at [email protected]