While Mayor Sharon Weston Broome is pushing a half-cent sales tax to fund $912 million worth of parishwide surface street expansion and improvement projects, gridlock-weary residents might be wondering how—or if—the tax package will help alleviate the almost daily traffic jams on Interstate 10 and the Mississippi River bridge.
Actually, it will help in a few ways, according not only to the administration but also to business groups that have spent the past several years lobbying for solutions to Baton Rouge’s traffic snarls, Business Report details in its latest feature.
To start, making surface streets more usable and efficient is expected to cut down on interstate congestion by getting motorists off the highway for short trips and onto local thoroughfares. Moreover, several key projects on the MovEBR list will help literally pave the way for interstate expansion projects—and, even, a new bridge across the river—by upgrading the capacity of the major arteries that will tie into the interstate or bridge.
But will the projects on the list really do as much to relieve congestion as is promised? Administration officials and economic development experts say even if they fall short of achieving every goal the projects will, at worst, take a significant bite out of the area’s traffic woes.
Read the full story to see the other ways the improvements could help traffic.
Check out Business Report’s cover story about the MoveEBR proposal here.
