Chamber: Build Pecue, interstate projects

• Advocate business staff
• Published: Apr 1, 2009

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While continuing to press for a regional loop, the Baton Rouge Area Chamber today recommended four individual road projects that could save more than 2 million hours of commuter driving time annually.

The No. 1 project — because it has the greatest benefit for the cost — is an estimated $15 million Interstate 10 interchange that would be built at Pecue Lane between Siegen Lane and Highland Road. The next three are:

--Widening I-12 from Range Avenue to Walker at a cost of $60 million.

--Widening I-10 from Siegen Lane to La. 73 in Ascension Parish ($110 million).

--Widening I-10 from La. 73 to La. 22 in Ascension Parish ($90 million).

The analysis was performed by ABMB Engineers Inc., a consultant in the multi-parish effort to build a Baton Rouge loop. BRAC President Adam Knapp said traffic congestion repeatedly scores near the top of economic development obstacles in surveys.

“We felt that the important first step in this process was to conduct this fact-based analysis in order to provide expert objectivity about which projects make the best use of state dollars to relieve congestion,” Knapp said in a chamber news release.

ABMB analyzed 15 projects to find the most cost-effective congestion solutions.

Some would relieve more congestion but cost much more. For instance, ABMB studied a new two-lane, 16-mile commuter expressway from Juban Road in Livingston Parish to downtown Baton Rouge. It could reduce 2.3 million hours of driving time by itself but cost up to $880 million.

Other projects studied were adding an I-10 lane in each direction from the Mississippi River bridge to the I-12 split ($250 million); a 27-mile commuter rail line, with five stations, from Ascension Parish to downtown Baton Rouge ($218 million); and one new lane of bus rapid transit in each direction from the Amite River to downtown Baton Rouge ($145 million). The rail and bus projects combined would save about 600,000 hours, the study concluded.