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Widening our interstate through town only points out the bottleneck choke point-- The Mississippi River. Adding a loop around the city would hopefully add 2 new river crossings (With the new John James Audubon bridge coming soon, there are 8 Miss. River crossings in the state). You can't widen any of the roads crossing the river now, and from the numbers that I have seen over the last few years, the traffic flowing from WBR is growing at 5+% a year. The loop will help the traffic there.
Widening the current interstate and state roads will only make more people drive on the roads and the small towns on those areas will bitch about how we ruined them by widening 190. Besides, the target traveler for the loop are the trucks trying to get around town, not stopping and adding to the congestion on the current routes. And they add to the tax base by paying the tolls. I would pay $5 to get to north BR on a loop if it took 20 minutes instead of an hour.
The ramifications of a loop would be to ease some of the surface road traffic and some of the heavy truck traffic on the interstate. Its a good thing and although it may cause some urban sprawl, it still is better than doing nothing.
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