Railroad agreement unlocks a safer link to Overpass District
Canadian Pacific Kansas City Railway has agreed to a pedestrian crossing near the Perkins Road Overpass. It clears the last real obstacle to a proper path linking nearby neighborhoods to one of Baton Rouge’s busiest restaurant districts—so people can stop playing real-life Frogger just to get dinner.
Where things stand: Fred Raiford tells RedEye he’s waiting on the railroad to tell him when the crossing will start. Once he has that, the city-parish can bid out the entire project. The parish has already set aside funding; the estimated price tag is $2.8 million.
The backstory: This didn’t start as a government brainstorm. Citizen activists—led by Varsity Sports’ Jenni Peters and Bldg 5 owners Misti and Brumby Broussard—raised money for a plan to link Perkins Road under the overpass to the cluster of more than a dozen restaurants nearby.
The design: The parish is following a design by Carbo Landscape that refuses to treat the space beneath the overpass as urban afterthought. The plan envisions a safe, multi-use corridor for pedestrians and cyclists, with lighting, murals, low-maintenance landscaping, seating and wayfinding signage. Once complete, the underpass path would dovetail with the nearby interstate-widening project, forming the spine of a linear park.
The bottom line: Raiford can’t give a completion date yet—he’s still waiting on the railroad. If built as designed, the project would transform a shabby, pedestrian-unfriendly area into a public space that people can reach and move through on foot, with art and green space along the way.
