Tagged: Department of Transportation and Development

The Crescent City Connection Police Department has been transferred to Louisiana State Police as part of a restructuring of the bridge police division.

The state Department of Transportation and Development says the police department's administrative transfer to the Department of Public Safety was effective Monday.

Officials say the New Orleans-based bridge police officers will continue wearing their current uniforms and using their current marked vehicles until midnight Dec. 31. At that time, the officers will get new DPS uniforms and vehicles.

State highway officials say they'll start a six-month study early next year into the feasibility of an alternative route around an eight-acre sinkhole in northern Assumption Parish.

The Advocate says the study is the initial step the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development takes to consider a proposed highway.

DOTD spokesman Dustin Annison says the study will determine if "the route could be built in the affected area in the event that Louisiana 70 is compromised."

State officials say the White Castle ferry is expected to be out of service another 4-6 weeks.

The state Department of Transportation and development said repairs to the vessel's propeller shaft were expected to be completed by mid-September. But delays in dry docking, the discovery of the need for additional repairs and the landfall of Hurricane Isaac have pushed the estimated return of the ferry to mid-to-late October.

The ferry crosses the Mississippi River between White Castle and Geismar, upriver from New Orleans.

The Jindal administration has again sought the governor's former executive counsel to do legal work for the state, this time for the Department of Transportation and Development.

Jimmy Faircloth is representing the department in a lawsuit filed by a Shreveport-based health care firm over the route of a highway extension in Caddo Parish. Faircloth said Friday that he was contacted by DOTD last week to do the legal work.

DOTD spokeswoman Jodi Conachen said Faircloth will be paid $175 an hour for the three-year contract, with a cap of $150,000.