Maybe the "same old trite oppositions and arguments" is all the ammunition project opponents have.
How is building an elevated freeway through an existing neighborhood not "old" or "trite" when it comes to a solution to traffic?
Except that the proposed Connector freeway does not "plow through" existing neighborhoods. Other than the segment within the Evangeline Thruway median between the L&DRR spur crossing and Mudd Avenue, and the segment of ROW which diverges from the Thruway to parallel the BNSF railroad line near Jefferson Street, there are very few displacements of neighborhoods or homes. North of the railroad and south of Fourteenth/Taft Streets, the Connector uses the existing Evangeline Thruway ROW, and between the Jefferson Street underpass and Fourteenth St., there are only isolated homes, commercial property, or simply vacant land due to the prior use of the railroad yard.
As for the neighborhoods themselves? Only Ballard Addition on the west side of the Thruway and Sterling Grove on the east side can say that they would be directly affected by residential displacements or noise/visual impacts. Freetown-Port Rico is located on the other side of the BNSF tracks from the Connector ROW, and would be indirectly impacted only through the underpass of the railroad that would be required for the Johnston St. interchange. McComb-Veazey would be somewhat more impacted by the small bit of ROW that would be required along the Evangeline Thruway between Fourteenth Street and Pinhook Road necessitated by the need to fit the freeway structure between the surface one-way local access roadway system...but even that would not necessarily be that great an impact to that neighborhood. The Thruway is only the western boundary of McComb-Veazey, so that would not count as "ramming through the neighborhood" at all.
Look, I understand this isn't a new urbanism forum. I'm not some kind of hippy-dippy no-roads person either.
I'm no "plow freeways through neighborhoods with no foresight or concern for the people living there" person myself...and there are even some forms of New Urbanism that I can support when the situation supports it. The problem is when some of them get trapped in the mentality of "Cars suck, and freeways suck even more; so lets make it so hard for cars that people will be forced to dump them for our vision of light rail and boulevards!" Alternatives to automobiles for transport are justified; simply ignoring the issue of people not readily giving up their cars and trucks, though, is ignorant.
I just know in most cities I've visited or lived in that an elevated interstate / highway does the following:
A) Provides a hang out for the homeless and panderers
B) No one seems to want to live near them and most actively seek to move away from them
C) They allow for motorists to bypass areas and therefore allow $$$ to bypass areas
D) They act as a barrier for development
E) They provide nice shaded parking if built by an existing dense place
That is exactly the kind of non-development that the Corridor Connectivity Study is attempting to prevent through creative concepts of greenspace, mixed use, and connecting all of the surrounding neighborhoods together to better synch with the proposed Connector project.
And as for the arguments about the homeless?? Gee as if the efforts already ongoing to discourage homeless people through spiking benches, harassment, and other means, isn't enough to discourage transients from using the space underneath elevated freeways? Here's a quaint idea: how about we provide real places for the homeless to reside safely so that they don't have to use the freeway to begin with?
Motorists will bypass the Evangeline Thruway area? Really? Only 9% of traffic using the existing Thruway are there to bypass it; the remainder use it to access the main critical destinations nearby (downtown, ULL, Lafayette Regional Airport). Trust me on this, the people using the Thruway are not going to just ignore the businesses that have been there; and the idea behind the Corridor Connectivity Plan is to revitalize the corridor (especially the portion not directly covered under the Connector) to become a hotbed for community-based businesses.
The bypass has its environmental drawbacks as well and maybe this coalition of folks can make an elevated freeway work.
Count me as skeptical, though.
You are entitled to your skepticism, just as I am entitled to my opinion that the Connector is the best alignment, and the people of Lafayette will do their best to make it work because this is the one chance they have to, as they say, "get it right the first time". Mitigating the impacts of an elevated freeway has never been offered in this way, which is way LCG was able to score that TIGER grant for this study. That's a big investment that can't go to waste, and I'm positive and optimistic that ultimately, they will get it right.