BATON ROUGE - Officials provided an updated report on the progress of the I-10 widening project, highlighting the need for the project itself and the impact it will have on citywide traffic, at the Metro Council meeting Wednesday night. 

During that meeting, DOTD provided minor details about the adjustments currently underway for Stage 2 of construction. Back in March, the department presented an option that would reduce the number of lanes available to two in each direction, which would save two years of construction time and roughly $60 million.

Those plans were met with major concerns from the public. 

"The public was pretty vocal and we received a lot of public comments concerned about the traffic," said Rodney Mallett, a spokesman for DOTD.

Now, engineers are weighing the benefits of maintaining three lanes in each direction during Stage 2. The designs will be presented to the FHWA in December and then DOTD will make a decision from there. 

The full presentation can be viewed on the city's website here starting at 2:45:37. 

The full PowerPoint shown during the meeting can be viewed here. 

The presentation offered numerous explanations of the benefits of the widening and the way infrastructure will be added and adjusted to accommodate for the construction, which is anticipated to be finished in late 2028.

"Commuters need predictability and reliability as they travel on I-10 through Baton Rouge," the presentation read. "Improvements to I-10 will reduce congestion and allow drivers to plan their trips with increased assurance that they will reach their destination on time."

I-10's design is outdated, said Bob Schmidt with the engineering company working on the project. Some of the design changes that will come with the widening will bring I-10 up to standard with more modern highways, such as the addition of shoulders in some portions of the roadway, longer acceleration and deceleration lanes for improved merge distance, lane arrangements designed to reduce weaving, and the replacement of existing aged infrastructure. 

Officials also provided more information on alternate routes that drivers are encouraged to use while the widening is taking place. 

DOTD will also add temporary signals to certain intersections with adaptive timing to address congested routes. 

View the PowerPoint above for more detailed information.