Seven years in, Baton Rouge plans $33M more for MoveBR management

(The Center Square) − Seven years after Baton Rouge launched its billion-dollar MoveBR transportation program, the city-parish is preparing to spend another $32.5 million on the private firms managing the work even as many of the program’s largest road projects remain years from completion.

The Metro Council is scheduled Wednesday to consider two-year extensions for the firms that have managed MoveBR since its early years: up to $19.9 million for Stantec Consulting Services and $12.5 million for Westwood Professional Services, formerly CSRS. Stantec oversees community enhancements, improvements to existing corridors and traffic-management projects, while Westwood manages the larger road-capacity projects.

MoveBR began collecting a voter-approved half-cent sales tax in April 2019. The tax runs for 30 years and is expected to finance more than $1 billion in road expansions, sidewalks, traffic signals and other transportation improvements.

But much of the work promised under the program has yet to become finished pavement.

At the end of 2025, MoveBR reported 47 of its 137 listed project phases as complete. Another 23 were in construction, while 67 — nearly half — remained in planning, design or right-of-way and utility work. The program reported $350.1 million in cumulative spending from MoveBR, the earlier Green Light Plan and other funding sources through Dec. 31, including $220.3 million specifically attributed to MoveBR.

Program managers and Councilwoman Laurie Adams say the apparent gap between money spent and visible construction largely reflects the years of work required before crews can begin widening a road.

“I think in the early years it's been hard to see the progress because it's a lot of the things you can't see,” Adams said. “I think over the next two years you're going to see project after project completed.”

Adams said the city-parish does not employ enough engineers and project managers to oversee a construction program of MoveBR's scale internally.

“We do not have the volume of staff in city-parish government that you would need to manage these types of large projects,” Adams said. “We cannot pay engineers what they can make working for private companies, and so we have to hire outside firms.”

Mike Bruce, a Stantec program manager, said the company effectively operates as an extension of city-parish staff, shepherding projects from concept through engineering, right-of-way acquisition, utility relocation, bidding and construction management.

Stantec's side of the program has completed about 58 projects, Bruce said, largely smaller sidewalk, accessibility and traffic projects that can move faster than major corridor improvements. About 130 projects are currently somewhere between the conceptual stage and construction, he said.

Bruce expects most of Stantec's portfolio to be completed or under construction during the next two years, leaving primarily a handful of large corridor projects.

Those larger projects are where the program's timeline becomes considerably longer.

College Drive, for example, required extensive traffic and design studies, additional outside funding, property acquisition and business valuations before construction could begin. Utility relocations can themselves take years, particularly when major telecommunications infrastructure must be moved.

“Large projects have those times 100,” Bruce said of the complications facing smaller projects. “Whether you're dealing with railroads or dealing with right of way or signalization, utilities, all of those steps just take longer than you ever wish it was.”

College Drive's first phase is now approaching construction bidding, Bruce said, with work potentially starting late this year or early next year.

Westwood project manager Travis Woodard said the same phenomenon explains why the capacity portion of MoveBR — the widening and new-road projects intended most directly to relieve congestion — has appeared particularly slow.

“A lot of the work has been the stuff the public doesn't see, namely the planning, the design,” Woodard said. “Now the right-of-way acquisition, you're starting to see utility relocations on major projects.”

Westwood expects seven capacity projects to be let for construction in 2027, Woodard said, with individual construction schedules ranging from roughly one to four years.

The city's own project list illustrates the backlog. Major capacity projects such as Port Hudson-Pride Road, Rollins Road, Thomas Road and Flannery Road remain in design, while others including Hooper Road and Highland Road at Siegen Lane are in right-of-way or utility stages.

Program officials also point to the COVID-19 pandemic as a significant disruption.

Bruce said staffing and supply-chain problems slowed projects while construction prices surged. Woodard said even traffic studies were interrupted because pandemic-era travel patterns did not provide engineers with reliable data on normal roadway use.

Adams said the city also created unrealistic public expectations by holding ceremonial groundbreakings long before some projects were truly ready for construction.

“We shouldn't have done the groundbreaking,” Adams said of the Mall of Louisiana Boulevard project, where railroad negotiations and bridge construction contributed to a lengthy timeline. “The groundbreakings have got to be moved closer to when the constituents are gonna see the final product.”

The city is beginning to move more of the large projects into construction. MoveBR broke ground this year on major improvements including Perkins Road and Nicholson Drive, and its construction schedule lists additional capacity projects preparing for bids.

Woodard said the public should see a markedly different program over the next four years.

“While it may have appeared to be slow to get projects into construction,” he said, “over the next four years, you will see the bulk of the capacity side of the program move into construction.”

That means the program launched in 2019 is entering what its managers describe as its most construction-heavy period — but some of the roads Baton Rouge voters agreed to fund eight years ago could still be under construction into the next decade.

This story originally appeared on thecentersquare.com.