One of the largest issues facing Baton Rouge in the year 2000 was traffic. Synchronizing traffic signals—fairly standard operating procedure in many other cities—was discussed as a key part of the solution.
It’s now 2023, several years after passing a billion-dollar MovEBR tax plan that supposedly includes synchronization and we’ve seemingly made little progress over the past 23 years, writes Business Report founder Rolfe McCollister in his new opinion piece.
One might think having both the money and the latest technology would be enough for city-parish engineers to get this project off the to-do list, McCollister writes. But apparently not.
On more than one occasion while recently traveling down Corporate Boulevard and then a stretch of road that includes College, Lee and West Lee drives, I experienced the poor planning firsthand, when a light turned green just as the next light a football field or so away was turning red, causing stop-and-go traffic. There’s another inexplicable lack of one-two light coordination on Jefferson Highway, near Drusilla Lane and the I-12 overpass.
This certainly isn’t what the public should expect 23 years after a problem is identified and going on five years after agreeing to a significant tax increase.
Also in his column, McCollister advocates for a change to Baton Rouge’s plan of government.
Maybe our traffic situation would be different if for the past several decades we had a professional city manager running the day-to-day of local government, like a Frisco, Texas, or Greenville, South Carolina, he posits.
The Metro Council should strongly consider putting forth a change to our plan of government, not only mandating this type of position, similar to Boston, but also creating two at-large council districts, McCollister writes.
Read his full column from the latest edition of Business Report. Send comments to editor@businessreport.com.
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