BR gets $1.8M federal grant to begin planning Nicholson corridor streetcar

A federal grant program will contribute $1.8 million to Baton Rouge for the planning and design phase of a 3-mile streetcar line on Nicholson Drive that would connect the LSU campus with downtown. The Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program—coincidentally abbreviated as the TIGER program, but with no affiliation to LSU—doled out $600 million in grants nationwide. Engineer Mike Bruce, with whom the city often consults on transportation issues, tells Daily Report this afternoon he doesn’t yet have a timeline on the streetcar project, but hopes the grant will speed up the process. “There are no guarantees, but that’s the hope,” Bruce says. When Baton Rouge applied for the grant earlier this year, Bruce told Daily Report the TIGER grant program is highly competitive, with only about 5% of applying projects receiving funding. In the $600 million awarded by the Department of Transportation through the program this year, just 72 projects are included. Plans for the first phase of River District, a multi-use development to be built along the Nicholson corridor, are set to be complete by the end of the year. Check out a draft of the city-parish’s Nicholson corridor plan. —Kelly Connelly