It's been a good long while since there's been an update on I-49 South, but yesterday one small but significant bump in the path of the upgrade began to be flattened.
LADOTD announced that they were taking requests for consultants to design and potentially construct the removal of the at-grade railroad crossing of US 90 just southeast of the LA 85 interchange in Iberia Parish, between New Iberia and Morgan City. The spur rail line, controlled by the Louisiana & Delta Railroad and which connects to the BNSF/UP mainline which parallels US 90, serves a sugar cane/molasses processing plant.
The original solution was to simply build an overpass of the mainline US 90 over the rail line, keeping the parallel frontage roads to cross at-grade. However, the state found that a cheaper solution was to truncate the rail line east of crossing US 90 while constructing a pipeline and pumping facility that would pass in a culvert below both the mainline US 90 and the frontage roads. The pipeline facility would be buried in a tunnel that would pass underneath the roadways; embankment would be needed to raise the height of US 90 and the frontage roads to allow proper clearance for the pipeline/tunnel/culvert facility and the surrounding conveyor/pumping/transfer facilities.
The RFQ filed yesterday by LADOTD seeks for firms to bid for the right to design and ultimately construct the project.
According to the Stage 0 report filed by LADOTD in 2014, the project would qualify for 100% Federal funding under the Removal of Railroad-Highway Grade Crossing Hazards program.
The RFQ did not set any dates for actual construction, but given the length of the contract, I'd say that construction could probably begin by either late summer or early fall 2019, with completion probably by summer 2020.
More information, including pdf files of the original Stage 0 study and the RFQ advertisement, can be found
here.