Tolls to modernize LA-1 to Port Fourchon Louisiana

Louisiana is developing a tollroad spur to the offshore oil and gas service delta city of Port Fouchon, some 135km (85mi) off the interstate system. This is staged development of an elevated 2x2-lane highway as part of a new toll project named modestly LA-1 Improvements. The new highway in fact is a total replacement - construction of what will eventually be a motorway-standard 2x2-lane road stretching 80km (50mi) between Port Fouchon on the Gulf coast and US-90 (fut I-49) at Raceland. LA-1 is the only highway leading down to the Lafourche peninsular of the Mississippi River delta to the port at its tip.

In the first stage, a 1970-vintage 2-lane truss liftbridge over Bayou Lafourche and its Boudreaux Canal at Leeville will give way to a cleanlined modern 4-lane structure at a higher level so coastal shipping can pass under without lifts. As well as the highlevel bridge the first stage of the project involves 27km (17mi) of largely elevated motorway, paralleling the existing LA-1, a crossing of another canal and interchanges on either side of the town of Leeville linking the motorway to LA-1, and two other interchanges.

Location is the middle of three marshy peninsulas that protrude southward from the Mississippi River delta into the Gulf of Mexico - about 90km (55mi) due south of New Orleans as a crow-like seagull would fly over bays unlikely to be bridged.

This is an area with a rich mix of heavy petroleum handling and low delta marshland amid meandering riverchannels. Port Fourchon is the closest dry land service area to the LOOP Offshore Facilities, a brilliant ocean mooring station for large oil tankers established a quarter century ago. It ranks as one of the busiest ports in the US in terms of sheer volume and value of its throughput. (www.loopllc.com) LOOP stands for Louisiana Offshore Oil Port and is the largest oil import point in the US and is connected by huge pipes to over a third of US oil refineries - mainly those in the central section of the country. LOOP LLC handles 300m barrels/year and is owned by Shell Oil, Marathon Ashland and Murphy and consists of three buoy anchorages in 34m (110ft) of water, so it can handle the largest oil tankers. There are fixed legged platforms with helicopter pads, personnel quarters and offices for dispatchers, ship pilots and huge oil pumps. It is connected by four underwater pipelines to oil refineries in Lousiana and via a 1.2m (48in) pipeline to CAPLINE pipe which goes to Chicago. LOOP also directly feeds America's largest oil storage facility, Clovelly 40km (25mi) away consisting of eight natural underground salt caverns or domes of 48m barrels of oil storage capacity. Offshore oil production in the Gulf also feeds the system from the MARS facility. Clovelly is a system of exchanging underlaying brine and oil via large pumps, and programming the dispatch of oil to Texas, the Midwest and Canada as needed by refineries.

The area handles 15% of US imports of foreign oil and about 20% of the oil and gas production of the Gulf of Mexico. Port Fouchon services about 6,000 workers on offshore platforms and has a population itself of about 35k. It is also a fishing port.

The existing LA-1, a meandering 2-lane road handles existing traffic (about 8k veh/day and 1k trucks - see endnote) but since the US enacted in the mid-1990s the Deepwater Royalty Relief Act the economics of offshore oil has been transformed and business at the port has trebled. An 80% increase in port activity is forecast by the feds to occur in the next decade at Port Fourchon.

The locals at the Greater Lafourche Port Commission are actively working to diversify local economic activity. They have elaborate schemes to build large new areas for port and commercial uses by reclaiming land. They do this by dredging lifeless swamp for fill and transforming tidal areas into "maritime forest ridges" where conditions are optimized for sea and bird life. They are reintroducing oaks and other deciduous trees into artificial islands. With all this going on traffic on the highway from US-90 will at some point overwhelm 2-lanes.

Frequently flooded existing road

A more pressing reason for replacing the existing road is its vulnerability to storms. It is built so low it gets covered by feet of water in storm surges that occur every few years and the port is cut off for a day or so. During Tropical Storm Bill in June 2003 LA-1 was flooded 2 and 3 feet deep for many hours. When the sea retreats the road is left covered with marine debris and the roadbase is weakened, shortening its life. The road is also inadequate for hurricane evacuation.

Ted Falgout, exec-dir of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission has put it this way: "This thread of a highway built for our grandparents to go visit each other on Sundays is now forced to carry the burden of (heavy petroleum offshore) activity."

A group organized to proselytize and lobby for the new road, the LA-1 Coalition runs an ad showing storm waters splashing over the road with the words: "You think we have an energy crisis now. Just wait until this road washes away."

Wilbur Smith Associates has done a design that involves a largely elevated 2x2-lane tollroad roughly parallel with the existing LA-1. It will be built in stages from Port Fourchon northward.

The first stage, about a third of the distance to US-90 (fut I-49) at Raceland is to be a 2x2-lane elevated road Port Fourchon to Golden Meadow costing about $165m and according to the undersecretary for transport John Basilica this is tentatively planned to be funded: toll revenue bonds $85m, federal highway grants $12m, state grants $16, and $50m by a TIFIA (US Gov) loan. End-on construction of the elevated roadway will be used to minimize wetlands impacts, and birdwatching and scenic pulloffs provided.

Environmental approval has been gained already and a full traffic and revenue study (WSA, who else these days?) is under way. The exact alignment is now being finalized by engineers and surveyors and test piles are being driven at various places to estimate the pile needs of the project. All pre-construction work is due to be complete by Sept 2004 according to the coalition. Louisiana law now allows for investor participation under the newly formed Louisiana Transportation Authority so there may be requests for bids next. Some $11m will have been spent on the project by mid-2004 under contracts executed.

US-90 upgrade (future I-49 South)

The LA-1 tollway will depend for its effectiveness on upgrades to US-90. From the northern end of the project at Raceland there is a 40km (25mi) 2x2-lane mostly surface arterial with frontage businesses northeast into I-10 and the greater New Orleans area. And in a westerly direction to Lafayette and I-10 only about a third is motorway standard, the rest being surface arterial. The state wants to upgrade the whole of US-90 from the end of existing I-49 in Lafayette and I-10 down in an arc 240km (150mi) through the delta cities of New Iberia, Jeanerette, Morgan City, Houma, and Raceland to New Orleans in a project called I-49 South or Future I-49. Engineering and environmental studies are under way. The highest priority section called SIU-1 (section of independent utility) between LA-1 and New Orleans, but the planning and permitting process has only just begun. It is less advanced than the LA-1 upgrade project.

Tolling In Louisiana

There seems to be decisive support for tolling on LA-1, as expressed by Ted Falgout, exec-director of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission: "Unless we toll this structure (LA-1 Improved) we will not be able to build this highway within the timeframe mother nature has given us... Tolls will allow us to proceedd without interruption on the most critical sections... Louisiana unlike its neighbor Texas has look grimly at tolls in the past. In this particular case a toll should be viewed as an investment in our future and an insurance policy on our region's economic stability."

In August 2001 Louisiana enacted HB2072 giving the state toll authority on both new and existing roads to be supervised by a new Louisiana Transportation Authority (LTA). The state house passed the bill 98-2 so strong was the feeling that new sources of finance are needed for roads. The LTA has not been very active yet - according to a preliminary goggling - but in its first meeting in May it selected LA-1 as its first toll project. It authorized the T&R study now being done by WSA.

Whether tolls will be considered for I-49 S is as yet unclear. It is a perfect case where Texas highway planning should be in place. The Texans require toll financing to be an integral part of the whole project study process. Louisiana's officials like most states are still living in the 1960s when project financing was an afterthought, the underlying assumption being that Uncle Sam & the Gas Tax Will Provide.

ENDNOTE: Beware of Big Mouth Louisianans. A powerpoint presentation being given around the place by John Basilica, Louisiana undersecretary of transport says that 300,000 trucks per month use LA-1. That got us quite excited: 10k/day! That's a truck route, not one of the biggest - highways to the ports of Los Angeles and New Jersey do 70k and 40k - but up there in the top twenty or so in the country. If we'd known the more modest truth we probably never would have researched this report. Texans it transpires aren't America's biggest big mouths, Louisianans are. Basilica is off by a zero. The actual number is 30k/mth or 1k/day. It's a road with trucks, and an important road no doubt, but LA-1 is no truck route. TRnews 2003-12-07