State transportation officials have decided against plans to link Baton Rouge and New Orleans with a passenger rail service, despite the support of East Baton Rouge Parish residents.Officials are abandoning the rail service because they did not envision it being a self-sustaining venture, according to Department of Transportation and Development Acting Communications Director Sherry Dupre, Louisiana Transportation Secretary William Ankner wrote in a letter to U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.”The Department of Transportation and Development has seriously studied the possibility of a Baton Rouge/New Orleans corridor,” Ankner said, according to a statement. “However, we recently informed the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation that we would not submit an application to receive federal stimulus money for this project.”Rough estimates put the rail costing $18 million per year for operations, Dupre said. The state planned to request $300 million in federal aid to launch the rail, according to Associated Press reports.”We had submitted a pre-application, which allowed us time to analyze whether we could meet the mandatory requirements to apply for the money,” Ankner said. “Because we weren’t able to finance the operating and maintenance costs of the service, the department was ineligible to apply for the federal stimulus funds.”One of the mandates to receive federal stimulus money is that the project be self sustainable, Dupre said.Chester Wilmot, civil engineering professor, said the project lacks both demand and infrastructure.”There is not sufficient demand between the two cities to justify a rail line,” Wilmot said. “In order to justify rail systems anywhere in the world, you’ve got to have really large demand.”The majority of rail systems in the United States are heavily subsidized — including rail systems in the New York City and Boston, Massachusetts areas, Wilmot said. He said the New York City and Boston corridors are among the “most  heavily traveled corridors” in the country.The logical location for a rail from New Orleans to Baton Rouge to end would be Union Station, and Wilmot said it would require work to link Union Station to either the street car system or the bus system in New Orleans. Baton Rouge lacks a public transportation system capable of acting as a feeder for the rail, Wilmot said.”It’s quicker and more convenient to travel by car,” Wilmot said. While the rail would not be self-sustainable, AAA Spokesman Don Redman said it would ease traffic moving west into New Orleans.”Certainly since Hurricane  Katrina, the traffic patterns coming from the West into New Orleans has more than doubled,” Redman said. “There are still a number of people who are making the commute from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.”With gas prices expected to rise as the economic recession comes to a close, Redman said demand for the rail could increase.”Once the economy picks up, we won’t be looking at these prices for gas,” Redman said. “We’ll be looking at prices again at $3.50 a gallon, perhaps even higher. By the end of 2010, we could be looking at $4.00 per gallon again.”- – – -Contact Lindsey Meaux at [email protected]