The alternative transportation culture is growing in Baton Rouge. But with it, there’s mounting tension, as 225 details in a feature from the November issue.
In a relatively short period of time, car-centric Baton Rouge has seen real signs of progress toward establishing an alternative transportation culture. Bike lanes or paths have been built in pockets throughout East Baton Rouge Parish, and more are slated for construction, including an extension of the Mississippi River levee bike path south from Farr Park to Ben Hur Road and the Ward’s Creek Trail connecting Bluebonnet Boulevard to Siegen Lane.
The parish’s FuturEBR plan calls for Government Street to be reduced from four lanes to three in certain sections to calm traffic and allow cycling lanes, and a design firm is currently finalizing details.
A statewide coalition of biking organizations has formed and is holding a summit in Baton Rouge early this month. And a recent Environmental Protection Agency grant is helping the city study a possible public bike share program.
But while all of these changes invite more biking in the region, the cycling infrastructure—and public education about how bikers and motorists should interact—hasn’t caught up. Controversy in one Mid City neighborhood over who gets to use bike lanes, along with several high-profile accidents, suggest the Capital City has a long way to go before it accepts its urban identity.
Some say it’s a normal juncture for cities in the midst of this kind of change.
“I’m part of the Baton Rouge learning curve,” says Gordon Mese, owner of the Garden District Nursery in Mid City.
On the evening of Aug. 5, Mese was cycling in the bike lane on Capital Heights Avenue with his girlfriend, Julie Morgan, when a motorist driving north on Blanchard Street ran a stop sign and struck him. Ironically, Mese and Morgan were returning from a memorial bike ride for a cyclist who was hit and killed by a vehicle on Goodwood Boulevard a few days earlier. Mese and Morgan were both wearing reflective vests. Mese suffered three fractures in his hip and was still limping nearly two months after the accident. The driver was cited for failure to yield and issued a ticket.
“He did a lot more than that,” Mese says. “He was definitely distracted.”
Mese, a landscape architect who pushed better urban planning as his main campaign plank when he ran for mayor in 2012, says Baton Rouge has made strides but is behind many of its peers.
“The rest of the world is way far ahead of us on this,” he says. “Most of the country is ahead of us.”
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