Christmas present turned Mardi Gras throw

Times-Picayune - New and improved I-10 is still months away

I wonder who screwed up here. The fix is most certainly not in, unlike most other situations across the lake. In this case, the asphalt wasn't started in time, so now it'll have to wait until after the winter months. Don't know why the hell they couldn't have surfaced it with concrete, but what's done is done, and we'll have to wait a few more months for the Causeway Blvd. chokepoint.

Rebuilding and redesigning the interchange between I-10 and Causeway is the next step in the process to upgrade I-10 to more modern standards and capacity. Yay.

Speaking of Causeway... bonus coverage!

Times-Picayune - Causeway storm-surge fix poses challenge for Corps of Engineers

Here, the idea is to raise the southern approaches to the Causeway to about 16 feet or so, as part of the ongoing project to strengthen the area's protection against storm surge, in this case by raising the levees. The trick is, the approaches kind of suck as it is, considering all the traffic that uses the bridge on a daily basis.

While there is room in the median to move the lanes around, and the existing approaches shouldn't have to be messed with much, it's still going to be the kind of headache that rivals most hangovers.

So far, the project is hopefully able to begin in 2010, sometime between late spring and early winter, but it's not possible to pin a clear date on it do far in advance.

Either of these projects will prove to be a nightmare for traffic for years to come. As always, I suggest going out of the way, mostly because I avoid the Causeway like the plague anyway. 24 miles over water with no shoulders... makes me nervous.