State legislators and Department of Highway officials are looking for ways to secure more funds for a big project.
The project, to turn US-90 into an extension of Interstate-49 but funding is scarce and the bill is high.
Current estimations put the bill at more than $5-billion- most of the expenses would consist of reconfiguring traffic flows through Lafayette and building a bridge over the basin. The section in Lafayette could cost more than $700-million alone, but it's a plan from the 1960's and it's open to new suggestions.
"All indications and all paperwork from back in the 60's call for a controlled access highway," Bill Fontenot of the DOTD said. "It would create unimpeded traffic from Lafayette to New Orleans."
"We keep chipping away at it," DOTD Secretary Sherri Lebas says.
Around $50-million is already being used to bring portions of US-90 to interstate standards. These parts include construction zones in Broussard near Pinhook and further south, near Jeanerette at the intersection of 90 and LA-85.
In Broussard, crews will widen the road to accommodate more traffic, bringing US-90 from four lanes to six.
At the intersection of LA-85, workers will reroute traffic temporarily to the service road while they build a bridge and interchange.
"It is a very expensive project and it may be a while," Lebas says. "In the mean-time, we're looking to make some interim improvements to ease traffic."
The future corridor could bring more big business to Louisiana. Fontenot says interstate highways attract trucking and easy, fast routes to the rest of the country. He says the future corridor will also open central Louisiana to the oil-cities and the coast.
While it could be years, maybe decades before 90 changes its name to I-49, work has already begun.

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