Perkins keeps waiting
One crosswalk got funded in months. The reason it's still not built is stalling every street safety fix in the parish.
A Halloween porch conversation turned into a funded crosswalk on Perkins Road in 16 months. Building it won't happen until at least 2028.
Why it matters: Perk Up Perkins proves Baton Rouge's bottleneck on street safety isn't money or hustle—it's the pipeline itself.
One pipeline: A five-figure crosswalk and a nine-figure highway rebuild move through the same review process at the same speed.
- That stretch of Perkins Road is still a state route, owned and maintained by Louisiana DOTD, so even a Metro Council-funded crosswalk clears the same review as a full corridor rebuild.
- MOVEBR's half-cent sales tax pours concrete and paint alike but funds no dedicated staff to push small fixes through faster.
- East Baton Rouge has logged 16% of Louisiana's pedestrian deaths since 2020, more than any other parish in the state.
What works elsewhere: Somerville, Massachusetts, and Hoboken, New Jersey, went three and seven years without a traffic death using tools that cost paint, not bond money.
- Hoboken daylighted 78 intersections in 2023 alone, clearing sightlines at corners with posts and planters instead of parked cars so drivers see pedestrians before reaching the crosswalk.
- The city also dropped its citywide speed limit to 20 mph, painted 61 high-visibility crosswalks, built 9 curb extensions and folded safety work into every routine repaving job instead of treating it as a separate project.
- Somerville installed more than 70 traffic-calming features in a single year and tracked results street by street—one corridor went from 80% of drivers speeding to 2%.
- Both cities have one government deciding. Baton Rouge routes even a crosswalk through two.
The bottom line: Somerville and Hoboken treat crosswalks as routine maintenance. Baton Rouge still treats them as infrastructure projects, and infrastructure projects wait in line behind bulldozers.