So apparently Iberville Parish President Mitch Ourso is upset about the fact that he may not get a bridge in his parish compliments of the Baton Rouge Loop.
To make things worse, Ourso’s decision has snowballed over to Ascension and Livingston parish. Now the presidents of those parishes are considering whether or not they can stay in the loop project if Ourso pulls out.
While I’m disappointed to see something like this happen, I think Ourso actually has a point. I mean if his parish doesn’t get a bridge, what *real* benefit do they get from the loop, and even further into that, if they don’t get a bridge now…they may never get one.
While Iberville Parish is not the most bustling of places, it holds a fairly steady population of roughly 30 – 35,000, about 8,500 of which resides in and around Plaquemine city. Ourso wants to essentially connect Plaquemine with the east side. A good idea. I think enough people would use this bridge to make it justifiable, and it would take some pressure off the MS river bridge in Baton Rouge, and even a little off the Sunshine bridge.
It just leaves one to wonder if this is really worth it now that 2 other parishes might follow the lead. As it is, many Baton Rougeans over 35 already question if they will even see this loop built within their life time. By the time the loop is built we will have a 10 lane interstate into both Livingston and Ascension parish, and 6 lanes or more on Airline and Florida Blvd respectively.
The Baton Rouge Metro is already choking itself, and has been for years. Even with all the improvements it will still be choking. Part of the problem is the fact that most of the widening taking place is *within* the parish, when it needs to be extending *beyond* the parish due to the rapid growth to it’s south and east. The only project currently extending beyond the parish is the I12 project.
I10 is poised to become another I12. It’s going to be widened all the way to Highland Road and stop, essentially creating another O’Neal lane predicament, and we’ll probably have to wait 10 years for that to be fixed.
The bottom line is that the Loop project cannot afford to be put off any longer.
