The Capital Region has long had serious traffic problems, and business leaders have long complained about government’s inability to fix them. A new business-backed coalition is hoping it can help find and implement the solutions before things get too much worse.
“Various groups have been working separately to address the issue, but timely and substantial solutions have not been forthcoming,” John Pacillo, operations director with Mexichem Fluor and chairman of the Greater Baton Rouge Industry Alliance, tells Business Report in a feature from the current issue. “It’s time for industry to take a more active role and get more involved.”
GBRIA, the Baton Rouge Area Chamber and the Center for Planning Excellence have assembled a coalition of major employers, including BASF, Cajun Industries, CB&I, Dow, ExxonMobil and Turner Industries, to name only a few. They’re calling themselves Capital Region Industry for Sustainable Infrastructure Solutions, or CRISIS.
“The time was right,” says Hugh Raetzsch Jr., president and CEO of Lyons Specialty Co., “for this group of business leaders to get together and start really looking at [transportation] and talking about it, and see what kind of influence we can have on the policymakers in Baton Rouge and other areas of the state.”
CRISIS is not pushing for any particular project. Not yet, anyway. The idea is that business leaders will converge around a proposal based on a robust cost-benefit analysis, explains Cordell Haymon, senior vice president with Petroleum Service Corp. and CPEX board chairman.
“CRISIS is responding to the need for a united leadership voice advocating for a comprehensive, regional approach to improving our transportation network that is driven by data—not politics,” Haymon says.
Many recent infrastructure proposals for the Capital Region, from the Loop to the BUMP, are associated with certain politicians or groups but lack broad support. Regardless of the merits, state officials and legislators from outside the region aren’t likely to get behind something when the locals don’t seem to agree amongst themselves.
The hope is that by choosing projects based on the best available data, the Capital Region will get the best possible return on investment from its infrastructure dollars. The state committed more than $400 million to build the John James Audubon Bridge connecting Pointe Coupee and West Feliciana parishes, and leaders in other parishes are still wondering why. Even supporters of the bridge admit that it was built in hopes of spurring economic development, not alleviating traffic, although vehicle counts have fallen short of projections.
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