By Darren Svan | The Center Square
(The Center Square) – Shreveport officials voiced concern that the Legislature failed to fund any of the city’s requests for money to improve lighting in residential neighborhoods or at a major intersection that’s experiencing vehicle fatalities.
Council members sought clarification about capital outlay and appropriations money after learning that lawmakers elected not to assist the city fund a major lighting project at the I-49 and the Southern Loop interchange. The project’s estimated cost is $1.4 million.
“We’ve been asking for this quite a bit,” said Chairwoman Tabatha Taylor.
City lobbyist Chance McNeely of the Delta Resource Group outlined which bills and projects lawmakers approved during his closeout briefing at the City Council’s work session on Monday.
This year, city leaders requested money for multiple lighting projects to address, among other places, the Allendale and MLK neighborhoods, and the Southern Loop interchange.
“What gets put in the budget is what our area legislators chose to support throughout the process,” McNeely said.
The city previously believed the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development would fund the Southern Loop project but that never materialized, said Tom Dark, city administrator.
“We typically have traffic backed up for almost a mile at Southern Loop and I-49 and it’s pitch dark out there,” said council member Grayson Boucher. “There’s got to be a way for the state to help us get some lighting.”
Boucher said two nighttime vehicle fatalities occurred near the interchange when drivers, who were unable to see tractor-trailers pulled off on the side of the road, struck them from the rear.
An uptick of vehicle crashes and fatalities is occurring throughout the city and parish, according to Police Chief Wayne Smith, who told the council at a previous meeting this year that more lighting could help reduce the number of pedestrian fatalities.
Caddo Parish leads every other parish in both vehicle fatalities and pedestrian fatalities. While the parish accounts for about 5% of the state’s population, Caddo’s eight pedestrian deaths this year account for 19% of all fatalities across the state, according to the LSU Center for Analytics and Research in Transportation Safety.
“Crash data continues to be of grave concern,” Smith said at the work session Monday.
Dark said the state normally provides funds for lighting projects of this type but “not at that interchange.”
McNeely said it’s too late to secure money for the current year, adding that lighting is an issue where the state’s regular funding is insufficient.
The city needs to secure approximately $500,000 to fund the Southern Loop project, Boucher said.