Louisiana has taken the next step to bringing an interstate highway loop to Baton Rouge residents and the surrounding region.
Hard plans for the BR Loop project were opened to the public Monday night. Mayor-President Kip Holden and a host of engineers were among those present at the first public forum for the project.
Holden, who chairs the project’s Executive Committee, said public input is crucial to the loop project because it affects many residents and businesses.
“This shows we’re not doing this in a vacuum,” Holden told The Daily Reveille. “As elected officials, we have to incorporate [residents’] thoughts and wishes into making the final design.”
The first phase of the loop project, what officials call the “implementation plan,” will draw public input regarding possible loop routes. The phase is slated to last one year.
Loop Project Manager Bob Schmidt said East Baton Rouge Parish will fund the implementation phase. The entire BR Loop project will cost between $3 billion and $4 billion, withan estimated completion by 2016.
“Beyond that, financing sources would be a combination including toll revenue, the transportation mobility fund, federal loans and bonds and perhaps other sources,” Schmidt said. “That’s part of what we’re doing now is getting our handle about how the financing package can come together.”
Schmidt said the project faces some obstacles but is still on schedule.
“The first and biggest constraint is where can we cross the Mississippi River,” he said. “Beyond that, the constraints are developed areas where people live, work and play, wetlands and river systems.”
Schmidt said finding potential high-traffic areas is also a priority.
“Traffic will generate revenue, and revenue is what will pay for the project,” he said.
Some residents are concerned the development of more interstate highways will infringe upon their property. Charles Breedlobe and Fran Johnson live near Bayou Manchac and Hoo Shoo Too Road in Ascension Parish, in the eastern portion of the proposed loop.
Breedlobe said he and his wife are worried about the loop’s impact on their home and the historic area.
“We moved out there because of the environment,” he said. “This changes all of the above.”
Breedlobe said Hoo Shoo Too Road has been on the map since 1814.
“Progress is great,” Johnson said. “But it’s about what can never come back. Houses can be rebuilt, but history will be destroyed.”
Holden is aware of views opposing the project.
“You have to be sensitive to what many people are saying,” he said, “but on the other hand, with a project of this magnitude, there will be some people who will lose their houses and businesses.”
Holden said displaced residents and businesses would be compensated for their losses.
“That’s the nature of this beast called highways,” he said. “We’re going to try our best not to destroy neighborhoods and put people at such a disadvantage they cannot have a quality of life.”
—-Contact Parker Wishik at [email protected]