No Tolls, Fiefdoms for New Hooper Road Bridge

By Woody Jenkins

CENTRAL — For the past six years, the Central City News has pushed hard for extending Hooper Road across the Amite River to Watson with a new four-lane bridge.

We have said repeatedly that such a bridge would be the greatest single step we could take to alleviate Central’s daily traffic problems and greatly reduce travel time for Livingston Parish residents who try to use Magnolia Bridge everyday.

A study by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber of Commerce confirmed this view and showed a projected traffic count on a Hooper Road bridge of 26,000 cars a day.  That would make it the No. 1 priority for highway construction in the Baton Rouge area.

Progress on the proposed bridge has been made.  It has gone from being completely off the radar of state and local officials to a project of serious concern.  Our local legislators succeeded in getting several hundred thousand dollars to begin a study of the project.  Now the Capital Area Legislative Delegation has formally requested that $6 million be included in the State’s Capital Outlay bill for further work on the bridge project.

This is an important step in the right direction, especially in these times when Capital Outlay dollars are in short supply.

My concern is that proposals are once again surfacing to bypass the normal Capital Outlay process and create special legislation and a Central Expressway Commission to levy a toll on the new bridge, control development, and create a new bureaucracy.  This would be a mistake of the first order.

The driving public is already paying the gasoline taxes necessary to fund this project.  It is the No. 1 priority in the Baton Rouge area, based on traffic studies.  So we should not panic and go in a direction that will be far more costly to the taxpayers and bypass the state Department of Transportation and Development.

Elected officials in East Baton Rouge and Livingston parishes simply need to keep pushing this project.  Get the money in the Capital Outlay bill and build it through DOTD with all the normal safeguards, no toll, and no added bureaucracy.

Central Square Townhouses. Tonight the Central City Council is expected to consider whether to approve Jeff Couvillion’s plan to build 115 townhouses at the intersection of Wax and Sullivan behind Cane’s.  Unfortunately, this project still has serious problems and should not be approved in its current state.  First, Central’s Master Plan provides that the location is supposed to be for medium density — no more than four units per acre — but this project has 12 units per acre!  Second, it no longer appears to quality as a SPUD because it exceeds 20 acres.  Third, there is no serious restriction on renting out these units.  Fourth, people in the new development will be walking to Wal-Mart but there is no crosswalk planned for pedestrians.  That will probably result in fatalities.  Considering all this, the project should go back to the drawing boards.

By Woody, Jenkins, Editor, Central City News