I would like to respond to an article I read in the Lake Charles American Press on 3/24/22 concerning funding for a new bridge in Baton Rouge. As we all know Baton Rouge has a lingering traffic problem that based on my opinion would not be solved with a new bridge. The current IH-10 Mississippi River bridge in Baton Rouge has four eastbound and westbound lanes and is adequate for current traffic flow.

The traffic problem is Baton Rouge is a bottleneck problem on IH-10 that is found on the east side of the bridge.

When you are driving eastbound on IH-10 on the Mississippi River bridge you go from four lanes to one lane as you enter where IH-10 and 110 merge. This one lane IH-10 issue in Baton Rouge has existed for as long as I can remember, and I cannot understand how this problem has not been addressed. I have driven IH-10 from California to Florida and the only place where IH-10 is a single lane is in Baton Rouge.

Our governor is proposing to allocate $500M dollars for a new bridge in Baton Rouge and only $100M dollars for the replacement of the Calcasieu River Bridge.

I cannot understand how anyone from Southwest Louisiana would support this proposition since our bridge has structural integrity issues and is of highest priority for LA DOTD.

My recommendation is for the State to allocate $500M dollars for replacement of our Calcasieu River Bridge and the allocate $100M dollars to Baton Rouge to fix their IH-10 bottleneck problem.

Fixing the bottleneck problem is cheaper than building a new bridge to nowhere.

KA Ackley

Sulphur