Back in February, the Better Block BR public workshop gave residents the chance to say what they think makes for, well, a better block. A series of visual examples were scattered around the meeting room at Ingleside Methodist Church. Visitors were given red and green stickers and told to place them on the examples they liked and those they didn’t.
It was probably one of the more productive aspects of the workshop, as residents crowded around poster boards and looked over different examples of bus stops—from the most basic to the most futuristic—sidewalk landscaping, parking options and more.
CPEX’s Camille Manning-Broome says the February workshop helped organizers fine-tune the layout for the upcoming April 13-14 event on Government Street. Participants seemed to favor wide sidewalks lined with trees, businesses close to the road rather than set back behind vast parking lots, and plenty of on-street parking. They favored bus stops with simple designs that provided shade and green space, rather than futuristic and flashy designs (and I agree that many of the futuristic, over-designed examples provided were heavy on oddly-shaped shade structures that seemed impractical). Participants also liked bus stops that included amenities, such as television screens and even mini libraries—something that’s turned heads in places like Israel. Basically, the idea of a complete street design for Baton Rouge’s infrastructure (which I’ve written about here), seems to have been embraced by a lot of locals. That’s a good sign.
