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There’s a red light district in Thibodaux, but not the kind of which you’re thinking.
It’s an actual series of red lights on Canal Boulevard that make passage through the city a nightmare during high traffic times.
That’s why the Lafourche Parish Council collaborated with the city of Thibodaux to fund a study that aims to find an alternate route around these red lights.
“I’ve seen myself in the morning wait five times at a red light just to get to the red light,” said Lafouche Parish Councilman Michael Delatte. “This bypass road would cut a half hour or better off their journey just to go a few miles, because once you hit the intersection of [Highway] 308, Highway 1, and Canal Boulevard in Thibodaux, it’s a traffic jam… The bypass road, two or three minutes – done deal.”
Delatte added people wishing to by-pass Thibodaux to get to Houma could take this shortcut.
“Right now, the way Highway 20 runs, you have to go through that traffic jam in order to get to Houma,” he said. “If you could go around the city, like the [Interstate] 610 split in New Orleans, you can hit it and just go right on through. And that’s what it’s all about, just efficiency of traffic.”
But the benefits wouldn’t just help those passing through Thibodaux. According to T. Baker Smith manager Jimmy Ledet, Nicholls students and Thibodaux Regional Medical Center workers and patients would also be assured faster travel.
“I think it would be a way to alleviate traffic to the middle of the city where folks are not going to the city but going around the city,” Ledet said. “But then, of course, you have a lot of traffic coming to the hospital or to Nicholls from the River Parishes, and this would be a better way to access Nicholls or the hospital.”
Ledet said an alternate road could help divert traffic from Canal Boulevard, which upward of 23,000 vehicles travel daily.
Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph also envisions the road helping with evacuations.
“It could kind of split people up, and get them out safer and quicker,” she said.
T. Baker Smith was awarded the surveying job for $80,000, split down the middle between the parish and the city.
Ledet presented two potential routes, Alternate 1 and Alternate 3B, for the by-pass road to the Lafourche Parish Council at last Tuesday’s meeting.
Both routes branch off Canal (La. Highway 20) around Andolsek Park and connect to Laurel Valley Road near La. Highway 308.
“Alternate 1 is some 2.8 miles in length, and alternate 3B is right at three miles in length,” said Ledet. “They are very close in cost. One of the alignments is shorter, but the elevations are higher so it requires more fill.”
One of these alternate routes will be selected at a later date.
The projected cost of the by-pass road is approximately $14 million, according to Ledet.
Council chairman Daniel Lorraine said the parish will begin applying for grants to build the road.
Pictured are the two potential routes for the Thibodaux Northeast Bypass. Officials say this shortcut would help alleviate traffic from Canal Boulevard. * Photo courtesy of LAFOURCHE PARISH GOVERNMENT
