Consultants Narrowing New Mississippi River Bridge Locations

BATON ROUGE – The 10/12 Industry Report provided an update on plans to build a new bridge to span the Mississippi River south of Baton Rouge. Stephanie Riegel wrote that consultants working with the state will spend the next three months doing traffic modeling, analyzing potential sites for the new span and working on public outreach.

The Capital Area Road and Bridge District is overseeing the project, which is in its early stages. Five possible sites connecting La. 30 on the east side of the river and La. 1 on the west side of the river have been identified and consultants will be narrowing that list down to two or three by analyzing traffic patterns and gathering other data.

At at Sept. 29 meeting of the Capital Area Road and Bridge District, economist Loren Scott said a new bridge will serve multiple purposes.

“Building a bridge doesn’t just alleviate traffic,” said Scott. “It creates jobs.”