La. 16 widening project completed

• By DAVID J. MITCHELL
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: Jan 6, 2009 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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WATSON — A quirky, two-mile bottleneck on La. 16 in Livingston Parish that has bedeviled motorists for years is history.

A $7.7 million project to widen the state highway from two lanes to four between Denham Springs and Watson is open to traffic after 11 months of construction and years of pushing by local leaders to fund it, state and local officials said Monday.

The La. 16 work, which also added shoulders and a raised median, extends from just north of La. 1025 to just south of La. 1019. La. 16 is also known as Range Avenue farther south of the expansion in Denham Springs.

The project began at the tail end of former Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s administration and was paid for with hurricane-fueled state surplus dollars allocated by the Legislature in 2007, officials said.

Gov. Bobby Jindal told area leaders during a ceremony Monday at Faith Family Church along La. 16 the project is a sign of his administration’s commitment to investing in infrastructure as a way to ensure that jobs exist to keep people in Louisiana.

He said the state is also about to start a $100 million widening of Interstate 12, another key route, between O’Neal Lane and the Denham Springs area. The planned expansion is shorter than originally discussed due to rising construction costs, state officials have said.

But Jindal said state officials will ask President-elect Barack Obama for funding to further expand I-12 through Walker in a federal stimulus package in Congress.

The package is one of several funding sources Jindal said his administration is considering for the “second phase” of I-12’s expansion, also estimated at roughly $100 million.

La. 16 has turned into a vital commercial and commuter corridor for western Livingston Parish as residential development has grown up along the highway.

La. 16, as Range Avenue, has been four lanes or five lanes in Denham Springs, as well as through a small part of Watson, but the stretch between those two points has been two lanes.

That bottleneck did not help rush-hour traffic backups along a stretch of highway that state highway officials said has 25,000 vehicles per day passing through it.

William Ankner, state Department of Transportation and Development secretary, said the La. 16 expansion is the first completed capacity project — meaning work to move more traffic, such as adding lanes — that was paid for with 2007 surplus dollars.

Done by contractor Barriere Construction Co. LLC, the project started in November 2007 and was finished Dec. 24, said Brendan Rush, DOTD spokesman.