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| Downtown BREC Park| The Advocate — Baton Rouge, LA:

I like the idea of beginning an urban greenway in Baton Rouge (a good case study on urban trails), but sometimes I wish priorities were higher for other projects.

The LSU Lakes and City Park. This area has the heaviest concentration of ped/bike recreation in the city. The use of this area is almost mind boggling. Yet nothing has been done to help this area. The "trail" is a mix of concrete, pavement, dirt, and road. Sometimes the path is three feet, six feet, or nothing at all. The signage dedicates the path to bikes sometimes, pedestrians sometimes, sometimes both, and sometimes neither. All while the pedestrian crossings are poorly marked, and never utilized correctly by motorist. Making this area incredibly dangerous.

The Mississippi River Levee Trail. This is the most modern and up kept "trail" in Baton Rouge. The trail itself isn't as heavily used as the "Lakes" trail, but it's a huge asset that is now being expanded to the Parish border. Yet it's hidden and has very little linkages throughout the city. (Heck, it only has two downtown).

So first of all, I'm very weary of the "interstate park". Very few successful examples can be found nationwide. Those few examples usually work because of density. There are far more examples of communities just getting rid of the freeway all together. Lafayette has been planning the urban portion of I-49 for years... and one can argue which is better: bypassing a city, or passing through. But at the end of the day, passing though gives a lot of complications. Creating a park underneath just doesn't 'fix' the overall problem.

Second, is the lack of vision the City of Baton Rouge possesses. In this case it isn't a lack of vision. BREC has identified a corridor plan for the trail system, which is Parish-wide. But with no overall funding plan, it is a piecemeal approach. For example, the parks department identifies the Wards Creek trail as a catalyst project. Yet it is short, has very little adjacent residential, and no short term plans to link the trail to the overall system (and hardly a realistic long term plan). Now they are proposing the downtown trail, which will have adjacent access to residential, but no serious linkages to the overall system (City Park and the river). It's not that I don't trust Baton Rouge... but I've seen projects get dropped time and time again (I've only been here five years). Thus we are left with a lot of 'pieces' to a lot of 'systems'. Given this history, the City needs to focus on important aspects. Right now they are just building links for stakeholders. That is fine for the near future... but if the successful links don't get built, people will view the trail plan as a fail. Again.

At the end of the day, the City needs to seriously invest in entire pedestrian and bike infrastructure. Until then I find it hard to get excited about new projects.


UPDATE - 11/9/2011 (5:00 pm)
http://www.1012corridor.com/archives/1012-corridor-weekly/latest/
In other news, the Mississippi River Trail is slowly coming together.