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My Baton Rouge Plan

I recently heard somebody say that Baton Rouge has the traffic of a city twice its size. Ouch.

So it became time to put my SimCity experience to good use. I am now working on a mass transit map of Baton Rouge that would personally make my life better. (Your happiness is not guaranteed.)

Note: Internet Explorer 8 may not display the rail lines, only the markers. Please use Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Opera.

Here's a list of my concerns with this personal plan so far:

• I've only hinted at Park and Ride locations. There will be many more throughout the area.
• I haven't given any thought to bus routes, but that is a vital part of this proposed transit system. I might add them later.
• I also haven't even begun to think about bike paths, but I just read about the idea of connecting neighborhoods with bike path linkages so bikers could use the quiet streets instead of using dangerous, major arteries. It would even be cheaper than creating bike lanes.
• Finding locations for transfer/transit centers is giving me problems. It's pretty hard to determine the best locations for these nodes because I have to consider all possible routes across the city.
• North Blvd. is completely covered with live oaks whose branches form an umbrella over the roadway. Installing a streetcar would require overhead wires. I'm afraid much of the branches would need to be trimmed back, forming an unnatural dripline. (Reminding me of a fringe haircut.)
• Currently, St. Ferdinand and St. Louis are one-ways, but this will be different by January 2012 when they get converted to two-way streets. This will allow the LSU-Perkins streetcar to go down St. Louis on the way to Nicholson, much better than the zigzag along South and St. Phillip that I had before.
• I'm not sure how I feel about the Plank Road streetcar line: it's very close to the Blue Line. I'm just thinking a streetcar would help out the businesses on Plank more than light rail would. I figure light rail is more of a rapid transit/express system while the streetcar lets you window-shop.
• The Government-North Loop has a three places where the tram going east and west are on different roads. I did this in an attempt to give both North and Government the trams they need. They're only 2 blocks apart, so it won't be that far to walk between them. For example, if you're at Baton Rouge Medical Center and you want to go downtown, you'd walk south a couple blocks (~1500 ft / 480 m) to Government and wait for the tram there. Alternatively, you can take the tram to Foster and Government, get off, and wait for the westbound tram.

I've more or less copied the proposed streetcar line around LSU from the FutureBR Vision draft (page 40) except I put it on Nicholson Extension instead of Stadium Drive and made a loop downtown. I also bypass LSU Avenue by running along W. Lakeshore. (I get the feeling that neighborhood wouldn't want a streetcar passing through it.) I'd also still want the line to be near Alex Box Stadium as those fools moved it farther down Nicholson.

In reality (and not just my personal fantasy land) the plan will have to be piecemeal. In programming terms, they'll have to use agile development, which means the system will have to be usable after each iteration of development. Then hopefully, the success and awesomeness of a tram and light rail in Baton Rouge will cause naysayers to instead say yes and to support expansion of the system. Really, I think the Perkins-LSU tram would be the best first installment. Obviously, the loop to the Perkins Transit Center could be left out since there would be no Blue Line to connect with.

I read that there used to be streetcar lines on South Blvd, East Blvd, and 19th St, but that's not entirely accurate. While there are rails in the intersection of East Blvd. with Mayflower, Europe, and France, my research shows that they never existed on South. (See my Baton Rouge Streetcar Map (1890-1936) for more details.) I felt it would be great to bring routes back to the streets that used to have them. I originally had the G-N Loop tram on 19th St too, but I decided to move it to 22nd to make better use of the CATS bus terminal. The terminal, Greyhound station, and commuter train station are just far enough apart that it prompted me to have a tram going in both directions on the road between them (Florida).

In the more distant future, it should be possible to tear down I-110, leaving only the Blue Line. The interstate is built way too close to downtown and separates the white faces from the black faces.

As a final question, do you suppose there used to be a West Blvd downtown? North, East, and South Blvd's make three sides of the square around Beauregard Town hinting that St. Louis used to be called West Blvd.

And while I'm at it, why is there also a North Street? It just confuses things.

Related Pages

• Baton Rouge Public Transit History
• Baton Rouge Streetcar Map (1890-1936)
• Baton Rouge Distance Map
• Baton Rouge Does Not Inspire