More than 100 people — most from Livingston Parish — urged public officials at a community meeting Sunday night to consider alternatives to the proposed Baton Rouge loop, charging them to find a route that does not affect anyone’s home.The “not in my backyard” attitude is not enough if it means others will be forced out of their homes by the loop, said Stephen Stafford, a Walker lawyer who organized the meeting. He argued the best option is to widen existing highways to impact communities as little as possible and then see if more needs to be done in the future.
“This is a community effort,” Stafford said before the crowd in the Walker High School gym. “It’s not enough to keep our houses if our neighbors have to lose theirs.”
Rethink the Loop!, a Livingston Parish group dedicated to saving homes from the loop, hosted the meeting in Walker where residents complained about the loop’s potential effect on their property — some of which had been in their families for generations — and questioned the planning for the project.
The 90- to 100-mile loop is projected to take eight to 10 years to build at a estimated cost of $4 billion with the aim of easing traffic congestion on Interstates 10 and 12 in Baton Rouge and spurring economic development.
Stafford listed four alternatives he said should be completed before the loop: widening Interstate 12; widening U.S. 190; making La. 447 a four-lane highway to Port Vincent; and building a new bridge over the Amite River near Watson.
Each of those alternatives, if completed together, would drastically improve traffic, reducing the need for the loop, Stafford said. His said his proposal would limit the number of houses affected by new roadways and would improve time for commuters who would not use the loop.
“We have one position that we will maintain,” Stafford said. “If one person has to unwillingly leave his house, we are opposed to (the loop).”
Livingston Parish President Mike Grimmer, the only public official to speak at the meeting, said he is willing to look at Stafford’s alternatives, but he also said he doubted they would be completed in the near future.
Many of those proposals — like the loop — had been considered for decades with no work ever being done on them, he said. If nothing is done on the loop, he said, the traffic situation would remain the same.
“It’s the same thing we’ve been hearing for 30 years,” Grimmer said. “What are we going to do with the traffic? The traffic is not going to go away.”
The traffic engineers and officials working on the loop are trying to identify routes that affect the as few people as possible, Grimmer said, citing a new northern route pinpointed last week that he said would affect few homes until it reached I-12 near Walker.
The routes, while limiting impact on residents, also have to keep the loop feasible for drivers, he said. The final corridor — expected to be only about 400 feet wide — won’t be selected without public input.
“There’s going to be some impact on people,” Grimmer said. “But we’re trying to find a path that appease the most people possible.”
Prentiss Jones, who lives only five miles south of I-12 on La. 447, went to the meeting with relatives to find out if more-detailed plans for the loop would be released.
The 21-acres his family has owned for about 100 years is in the middle of one possible corridor, he said, and he wanted to get more-concrete information about the route.
Jones said he is not opposed to the loop, but he is concerned about relocating.
Moving the loop a few hundred feet away from his home, even chopping a few acres off his property in the back to do so, wouldn’t bother him, Jones said. He just doesn’t want to lose his home.
“We’re setting up for retirement,” Jones said. “We don’t want to move.”
Source: The Advocate
Photo: PATRICK DENNIS
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