by Malcolm Butler
For the past year, the Lincoln Parish Police Jury, City of Ruston, and Hunt, Guillot & Associates have been teaming up on a process to develop a new Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) for Lincoln Parish.
And although it’s not complete yet, a public meeting was held Monday night in the Jack Beard Room at the Lincoln Parish Library to update the most recent status and answer any questions from the public.
Mike Causey, Vice President for Corporate Strategic Development at Hunt, Guillot & Associates, made a 30-minute presentation to a modest crowd that included Ruston Mayor Ronny Walker, police jurors Glenn Scriber, Logan Hunt, Milton Melton, and Dan Lord, and a smattering of Lincoln Parish residents.
“The LRTP is a (Department of Transportation and Development) tool that has been used across the state,” said Causey. “It looks at the assessment of the current conditions of the transportation system in our parish.
“The DOTD developed this tool, and we follow this tool to meet their expectations.”
Causey spoke to the process over the past year which included a survey of Lincoln Parish residents which elicited over 1,400 responses. Causey compared the response to similar surveys recently done in Opelousas and Amite which he said had less than 150 responses.
“Our community is well engaged compared to others,” said Causey.
The goals of a new LRTP are:
- to provide a safe and secure transportation system
- to maintain a high-quality and dependable transportation system
- to support economic development and regional competitiveness
- to improve connectivity and mobility across Lincoln Parish
This process is way overdue. The last time an LRTP was created for Lincoln Parish was in 1998, almost three decades ago.
“We have gotten a lot of money from the feds over last 11 years,” said Walker. “But we had to fight to get it because we did not have an updated study like this. It will help us tremendously. The city and the parish are working together and that is huge.”
The roadmap for the process includes:
- Establishing the planning team
- Collecting existing data and plans
- Engaging the community
- Conducting the needs analysis
- Setting goals and objectives
- Developing strategies
- Preparing the plan
Currently, the planning team has a list of 26 projects (see below attachment) included within the recommended transportation improvement project list, a number that has already been whittled down. These projects range from price tags as high as $96 million down to some under $1 million.
“We selected some preferred strategies to rank some of these projects,” said Causey.
The Lincoln Parish Police Jury will continue this process, analyzing the list and possibly whittling it down even further, while Economic Development and Planning Committee Chairman Logan Hunt said they will also try to prioritize the list.
Once the LRTP is completed and approved by the Lincoln Parish Police Jury, the next step will be to find funding for projects through federal and state appropriations and other grants.
“This (LRTP process) simply identifies some projects,” said Causey. “It is not detail design. It’s not funding. It’s all the aspects we have to work through in order to get funding.”
