Starting the fight - with civility.

Our newspaper has been in the midst of something of an old-fashioned editorial campaign over issues of gridlock and sprawl, most of which involve long-term concerns for Baton Rouge. One specific fight, though, was one we picked with the city administration over building a new overpass in a blighted area immediately adjacent to downtown.

Citizens were engaged on both sides, with letters to the editor and statements before the city council pro and con marked by a civility so often absent at the time nationally. Our most heated debates lacked entirely the hallmarks of D.C. discourse; wedge issues like race - and there was some case that might have been made that an African-American neighborhood would bear the brunt of the mayoral plan - were never mobilized to inflame opinion. Instead, speakers of all races and positions on the issues engaged in an elevated discussion that was praised as a model for how our town ought to deal with public problems.

The overpass was eventually approved by a close vote of our Metro Council. It struck me more than once, at a late night of council hearings, that we succeed in our business when we enlarge debate without enlarging the space of provocation. This is the editorial that started the fight.

Reconsider plan for overpass

An Advocate editorial, November 8, 1998

The mayor and council are bound, they say, by the decision of voters to build an overpass on North Boulevard, from Interstate 110 to 22nd Street. Officials have gone so far as to get an opinion from the state attorney general: The city must build an overpass on North Boulevard if that is what voters said in a tax election.

Alas, the mayor and all his men go to great lengths to answer a question that hasn't been asked.

The issue is not whether officials are bound by the decision of voters. They are.

The real question is whether the overpass is a good decision for the city, in light of recent events and studies, and thus whether the city should ask voters to approve a reallocation of the $6 million needed to build the overpass.

Mayor Tom Ed McHugh observes that most of us will be in our graves if we wait for the state to build another overpass leading into and out of downtown Baton Rouge on the state highway, Florida Street. So the North Boulevard overpass was conceived as part of a 1997 tax election for local road projects, approved with nine other major projects.

Since then, as plans for the giant hump have been made available to citizens, numerous people who live and work in the area have come out against the overpass. City officials have, to their credit, worked with the citizens opposed to the plan to adjust the design of the project, but in the final analysis there's not much that can be done along those lines. Short of building elevators for cars, there is no way to carry traffic continuously over a Kansas City Southern train without a big overpass.

Besides the neighborhood opposition, which is important, there are other good reasons to reconsider the plan. The city's downtown master plan is still in draft form, but it represents a significant change in philosophy about projects like the overpass. Public works designed around a few hours a day of automobile traffic solve only one of the city's problems, at great expense, while intruding on the block-by-block neighborhood development that is really more important in the long run.

At the cost of millions, we save motorists a few minutes for a few portions of the day, in a place where there are already several alternate routes to avoid train traffic. Is that the city's priority?

In October, the mayor of Milwaukee spoke about city redevelopment in a lecture in Baton Rouge. Part of his remarks focused on the devastating impact of large highway projects in the center of America's cities. The mayor, John O. Norquist, said that highways often blight areas around the streets, and prevent the development of grid patterns that more efficiently move traffic. A welter of concrete and freeways builds shadows, not city life.

Previously, national experts assessing Baton Rouge for the downtown master plan observed that one of downtown's strengths is that the Interstate highways in the area are elevated, allowing a flow of traffic through a traffic grid.

By these kind of analyses, there is a case for reconsidering the North Boulevard project as an overpass. Rather, the city ought to look at extending from the Interstate to 19th Street the look and feel of the fabulous section of North Boulevard downtown.

Oaks and walkways won't get drivers around the trains, but they will be an investment in the long-term redevelopment of the neighborhood. Today, North Boulevard's blocks past I-110 are often a shambles of blight and neglect, but there are some thriving businesses there and some fine architecture in a city that doesn't have many historic structures left. Rather than declare the neighborhood dead - because, Norquist said, that's what such highway projects do - why not forgo the overpass and invest the money into redevelopment of the street?

Certainly, the city would have to go to voters to ask their approval of a new plan. That costs money, and perhaps there's a constituency out there for big overpasses. There are also citizens who want their officials to have the initiative to respond to the best practices from other cities - e.g., Milwaukee - and not go ahead with projects just because they are there.

There are no villains in this story. City officials in good faith set out to solve a traffic engineering problem; it was bundled in with a number of other, needed projects and approved by voters. Citizens will understand and appreciate being consulted about real options, rather than having governmental inertia rule.

Traffic engineers do not build cities, and freeways aren't communities. Neighborhoods and streets and sidewalks ought to be the mantra for city planners in the next century in Baton Rouge. North Boulevard is a good place to start.

NCEW member Lanny Keller is an editorial writer for The Advocate of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His e-mail address is [e-mail]