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Government Street "Road Diet" Project finally reaches completion

2 years 5 months 6 days ago Thursday, October 21 2021 Oct 21, 2021 October 21, 2021 7:47 PM October 21, 2021 in News
Source: WBRZ

BATON ROUGE - The Government Street "Road Diet" Project is complete, reducing the major street from four to two lanes to make it more pedestrian and cyclist-friendly.

"More people walking. More people out with their kids now," said Jennifer McCarty.

McCarty has been living on Government Street almost her whole life. She says the new construction is good for sightseeing, but the drivers are having problems with the medians.

"They need reflectors in the medians because I've seen multiple people jump them," McCarty said. "Not knowing of the change. Just traveling through and the speed needs to be reduced due to more pedestrians."

Allen Morris has lived on the street since 2011. He was all for the project but thought the bicycle lanes would be more than just green stripes painted at the intersections.

"I was hoping for more in the way of a bicycle path instead of a stripe painted on the road that doesn't do anything to keep cyclists safe from traffic," Morris said.

The CATS bus system suspended service on Government when construction began in 2018. The service plans to have buses back on the streets soon, but with fewer stops.

"I think it was a wonderful idea," said homeowner Martin Anderson.

According to Anderson, there were a lot more speeders and wrecks before work on the "Road Diet" began.

"It slowed down traffic," Martin said. "We once had an accident where a car flipped over right in my front yard."

A ribbon-cutting to mark the end of construction is scheduled for Saturday. City and state officials are expected to attend.

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