Author: AnthonyJK

The Great Debunking Of The Teche Ridge Bypass: Why It Is NOT The Alternative To The Connector Some Would Argue

Map of proposed I-49 Lafayette Connector freeway

The group of people who are opposed to the I-49 Connector freeway project through Lafayette have always tended to build their case around an alternative alignment referred as the Teche Ridge Bypass, which would revert the proposed Interstate highway to the east of the center of Lafayette through St. Martin Parish, then reconnect with existing I-49 generally east of Carencro. Their argument has always been that Teche Ridge would be much cheaper, would avoid the displacements and divisions that the Connector alignment using the Evangeline Thruway/US 90 corridor would allegedly ensue, and could be built in “half the time” for “half the cost”.

With all respect to these people, who’s legitimate concerns about the impact of the Connector are worthy of addressing, I will show here why Teche Ridge is not as much a slam dunk solution to finishing I-49 through Lafayette. Indeed, a closer investigation will find that it is more of an airball.

First, a brief history summary lesson: In 1993, after the first I-49 Connector environmental study was terminated before a Final Environmental Impact Statement could be produced, the Lafayette Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO, at that time called the Lafayette Areawide Planning Commission) paid for the Lafayette North-South Corridor Study, which analyzed 4 alternative corridors for completing I-49 through Lafayette. One circled around metro Lafayette to its west and south (Western Bypass); two bypassed Lafayette to the east (Eastern Bypass ran from just north of Carencro to near Breaux Bridge to link up with US 90 just north of Broussard; Eastern Alignment was similar to Eastern Bypass but shifted its connection to I-49 North to just south of Gloria Switch Road); and one used the Evangeline Thruway/US 90 corridor. A map of the LN/SCS alternatives studied appears below:

Corridors for Lafayette North-South Corridor Study (1993)
Full report downloadable by clicking on link.

That study concluded that the Evangeline Thruway corridor was still the most desirable and cost-efficient choice for extending I-49 due to environmental factors and traffic counts. Their analysis reported that since only 11% of traffic on the Thruway/US 90 corridor was traffic bypassing the city of Lafayette, a bypass would not attract or divert enough traffic from the central corridor to be cost effective; and there would also be enormous environmental impacts on wetlands and sensitive tributaries (such as Cypress Swamp and the Vermilion River).

It was soon after that study was released that opponents of the Connector decided to search for another east bypass alternative that would be more suitable for their needs; by 1994, it appeared that they had found it when the St. Martin Parish Police Jury contracted out the engineering firm of Baker and Associates to perform a “feasibility study” on a new bypass route. It was dubbed the “Teche Ridge Bypass” because it followed the Couteau-Teche Ridge that overlooks the Bayou Teche and Vermilion River basins; running between Cypress Swamp and Bayou Teche basin. A rendering of the proposed Teche Ridge Bypass taken from that study appears below:

An overview of the I-49 Teche Ridge Bypass alternative,
from the Baker and Associates study.
(via the I-49 Teche Ridge Facebook page)

 Since then, Connector opponents have been pushing Teche Ridge as the go-to “common sense” alternative to avoid the “mistakes” of building the Connector through “the heart of Lafayette”. Under actual analysis, however, their arguments turn out to be wishful thinking at best.

First off, let’s deal with the cost issue. Teche Ridge proponents are always pushing that their bypass will be significantly cheaper to construct than the Connector (or, as they derisively call the central alignment, “the Con”). The initial quote given by the St. Martin Parish study gave a raw total cost of $400 million for construction of the bypass; which would roughly compare to the estimate of $350 million quoted for construction of the 5.5 miles of the Connector from I-10 to just south of Lafayette Regional Airport. The section just south of the airport to the US 90/LA 88 interchange is covered by another project linked to the entire US 90 to I-49 South upgrade. That section had an projected cost of $350 million; which would make the combined cost of the overlapping portions of the central corridor $750 million. That would appear to justify the Teche Ridge advocates’ claim of their alignment being cheaper.

Or, so they think.

The group Concerned Citizens of Lafayette teamed up with the Greater Lafayette Sierra Club to file a lawsuit against the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LADOTD) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to block implementation of the 2003 Record of Decision approving of the currently proposed I-49 Connector freeway alignment. In their lawsuit, they explicitly promoted the Teche Ridge Bypass as a superior alternative to the approved corridor, citing costs and less negative impacts. Part of their case came in the form of an affidavit that they sent to LADOTD as a elongated comment response to the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) that was released in October 2002 prior to final approval in the ROD. Here is one paragraph of Concerned Citizens’ affidavit where they defend Teche Ridge:

LADOTD, in their 2003 I-49 Connector ROD, offered this series of responses to the Concerned Citizens’ brief, which calls directly into question those arguments.

Keep in mind that that was $601 million in 1993 US dollars; you would have to adjust accordingly for inflation to reach the current value for the Teche Ridge Bypass, which would probably bring the total to around $700-750 million. And, that would not include the costs of improvements that would still be required along the US 90 corridor to meet the traffic needs that Teche Ridge would fail to address because it would not attract traffic away from the Evangeline Thruway/US 90 corridor.
Most recently, opponents of the I-49 Connector and backers of Teche Ridge have used the current estimate of the costs of building the Connector freeway based on the now currently ongoing Corridor Conceptual Design Study as a wedge to push their favored bypass. They use the currently quoted estimated cost of $750 million to $1 billion as a wedge in their favor…except that that estimate doesn’t necessarily reflect the actual construction costs, but rather the amount of revenue that LADOTD has estimated they could get allocated for the project through Federal and state funding. Furthermore, there has still been no true official feasibility study of the Teche Ridge route to analyze its true economic and social impacts on its path, which would involve its own issues of sensitive wetlands and displacements as well. 
Future posts here will debunk the exact claims that the Connector would do permanent damage to Lafayette such that only a bypass would be sufficient. For now, though, a discussion of the fundamental flaws of Teche Ridge will suffice.
(to be continued)

Introduction: Building A Better Connector For Lafayette

First off, a disclaimer: I represent no one but myself, and my opinions here are strictly my own. They do not reflect anyone from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LADOTD), the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the Lafayette City/Parish Consolidated Government (LCG), or any agency affiliated with the I-49 Connector Partners design team or that of the Evangeline Thruway Redevelopment Team’s Evangeline Corridor Initiative (ECI). All official inquiries about the Connector freeway project should be deferred to the official Lafayette Connector website,  DOTD, FHWA or LCG.

I have been a supporter of the process of building a freeway within the Evangeline Thruway corridor in Lafayette for most of my lifetime, and I have seen the progression of the development of this project from its initial conception during the 1980’s to the current Conceptual Design Study now ongoing.

The process for implementing the I-49 Lafayette Connector has been inching along in a jerky fashion: from the aborted 1992 Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), to the 1993 North-South Corridor Study, to the 2003 Final EIS, approved with a Record of Decision, to the original Conceptual Design Study that started in 2007 but was terminated in 2008. Along the way, the process has met with organized and passionate opposition from many citizens and organizations who fear that the implementation of the Connector would further divide and destroy the inner fabric of Lafayette. Most of them have promoted as an alternative a loop bypass called the Teche Ridge Alternative, which would run to the east of Lafayette proper generally along the Coteau-Teche Ridge plateau above the Bayou Teche and Vermilion River basins through St. Martin and eastern Lafayette parishes.

The promoters of Teche Ridge contest that that alternative would complete the extension of Interstate 49 from Lafayette to New Orleans at far less a cost fiscally and environmentally than the Connector would. They even went as far as to file a lawsuit after the initial Record of Decision for the Connector project’s current alignment was approved in 2003; but their suit was thrown out by U. S. District Judge Tucker Melancon in 2004; that decision survived an appeal to the U. S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later that year.

The current Conceptual Design Study and Preliminary Design process was restarted in October 2015, using protocol and conditions set forward through the Joint Agreement between DOTD, FHWA, and LCG that was signed in 2002 as a precondition to the ROD, Originally, this process was supposed to simply reconfirm and implement the preapproved 2003 Selected Alternative (RR-4 with MPO Subalternative and Subalternative H), with additional Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS) design integrated into the entire alignment to fulfill the requirements of full integration and connectivity within the neighborhoods affected within. In the midst of sharp concerns from some local community  interests about the divisive impacts of some elements of the Selected Alternative, however, the Connector Design Team decided to open the floor for “refinements”; i.e., modifications to the Selected Alternative that would mitigate these concerns. As a result, 19 refinement concept modification proposals and 23 design modifications were proposed and either were or are now being analyzed as modifications to the original alternative.

In addition to that, the FHWA, in the midst of performing an Environmental Reevaluation of the 2003 Record of Decision, which is required for any major project where over 3 years had passed since a ROD was approved, determined that a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) was the appropriate protocol and review for these refinements and potential modifications. That process was initiated in August of this year, and will produce an amended ROD by at the latest the spring of 2018.

Another player in this was the Evangeline Thuway Redevelopment Team (ETRT), the organization entrusted by Lafayette Consolidated Government with the job of incorporating the Connector freeway design with the neighborhoods and downtown sections that would be bisected by the project. In 2015, ETRT applied for and was awarded $500,000 from the US Department of Transportation through their Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant program, for the purpose of expanding and maintaining connectivity and neighborhood-appropriate economic development for the Evangeline Thruway/Lafayette Connector corridor. The Connector would take most of the Evangeline Thruway for its right-of-way, only deviating for a 2 mile section on new alignment between near Simcoe Street and just north of Pinhook Road. The Evangeline Corridor Initiative (ECI) was the functional organization for these efforts, and their studies yielded two particular design concepts for the downtown portion of I-49:

  • Elevated Mainline with Signature Bridge: in which the freeway would be fully elevated throughout the downtown area with no standalone interchanges, but with the existing Evangeline Thruway modified (perhaps converted to an urban boulevard) to serve as the access for downtown connections and major streets; the viaduct would be raised to a maximum of 40 feet above ground level and enhanced with CSS concepts as green space, park space, maximum joint use with pedestrian/bicycle access, and parking; and with considerations for appropriate development within the corridor.
  • Partially Depressed And Covered Mainline: in which the Connector freeway mainline would be sunk 10 feet below ground level and given another 10 feet of vertical clearance above ground, for a total of 20 feet of vertical clearance; then completely covered in the form of a partially submerged tunnel, with berm treatment on both sides using 100 – 150 feet either side with 6 percent sloping allowing for cross streets to pass over the “tunnel” for connectivity; and allowing for development via mixed use on either side of the mainline freeway accessible through an avenue/boulevard setup flanking or on top of the mainline structure. (There is also an option for the boulevard using the existing Thruway ROW.)

I will cover more about the ECI options in future posts, as well as why I favor the Partially Depressed and Covered option as the best solution for implementing the Connector through Lafayette. For the moment, though, there is the matter of some of the arguments that are currently being made against the Connector by the very same people who have been opposing the alignment through Lafayette from the very beginning. In particular, the Greater Lafayette Sierra Club has been in the forefront of efforts to kill the Connector project and replace it with a bypass — mostly, the Teche Ridge bypass, but also the proposed Lafayette Regional Expressway (LRX) outer tollway loop that would go south and west of Lafayette. Their Y-49 and Teche Ridge Facebook pages state their cases quite adequately, as well as this blog formed by a well known and very outspoken opponent of the Connector freeway.

I do not in any way wish to demean Michael Waldon, Harold Scheffler, or any of the other opponents whom have advocated against the Connector freeway, nor do I want to diminish in any way that this project will indeed have some major impacts and much dislocations for people within the city of Lafayette. They have every right to speak their mind and offer critique and promote their alternatives. What I intend to do is to just as respectfully counter their arguments and refute their claims about the Connector having a negative impact and the Teche Ridge alternative being a suitable alternative. I intend to make the counter claim from my own perspective and using fact and detail that the Connector freeway, with the modifications and alterations proposed by the ECI and a few proposed by myself, can be and is the best alternative for completing I-49 through Lafayette.

References, unless explicitly stated otherwise, will use all of the historical documentation of the I-49 Lafayette Connector freeway project as listed in the Project Library section of DOTD’s Lafayette Connector website.