Former Mayor Kip Holden is blasting his successor, Mayor Sharon Weston Broome, for her recent decision to defer for at least another year a request for $67.5 million in federal funding for a proposed 3.4-mile tram along Nicholson Drive.
Holden’s administration championed the controversial tram project, which would connect downtown with LSU and was touted as an economic development project to help revitalize the ailing Nicholson Corridor and Old South Baton Rouge.
Broome’s administration, however, has yet to fully embrace the project, which has come under fire from disparate factions in both north Baton Rouge and the southeast portion of the parish.
“When federal money is available, are we so arrogant that we would choose to leave that money on the table, and say, ‘I may go back next year and apply for it then?’” Holden says. “That’s not how Congress works. That money may not be available next year.”
Broome’s administration confirmed earlier this week that it has decided to let the September application deadline for funding from the Federal Transportation Administration pass because the mayor wants to study the project in more detail.
Broome tells Daily Report she is not necessarily pulling the plug on the $170 million TramLinkBR, which has been in the works since 2013.
“I’m very consistent with where I’ve been on this all along, which is to say we need to look at the big picture of overall connectivity,” Broome says. “That is not to say we’re not doing it. But we’re putting it on pause.”
In mid-2016, the tram looked like a done deal, with then-U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx—a personal friend of Holden and his wife—indicating his support for the project. Last fall, however, in the wake of the flood and on the advice of its consultants, the city-parish decided to defer its application for funding for one year—until this September. At the time, city-parish officials said they could buff up the city’s application with more time and had a better chance of securing the funds, which would pay for about half of the project.
Now, with Broome’s decision to wait another year, the earliest the city-parish could apply is in September 2018, which would mean the project, if approved, would not be included in the federal budget until 2020.
Holden says it’s disappointing to see a potentially transformative project that took so much time and so many resources fall by the wayside.
“To stop the progress that so many citizens worked for years to bring to fruition is a mistake,” he says. “For South Baton Rouge, Nicholson, LSU and downtown this was a cornerstone project. When you have your flagship university, how can you think about letting something like get away?”
—Stephanie Riegel
