While the cost to rebuild the streets, highways and bridges devastated by Hurricane Katrina remains unknown, one thing is certain: It will cost more than any other post-disaster reconstruction effort in U.S. history, KTBS Channel 3 of Shreveport, La., reported.
As most of New Orleans remains under water, nobody has thought about estimating the cost to rebuild. At this point, transportation officials have been primarily concerned with opening the roads for emergency access.
According to KTBS, Jeffrey Brown, assistant professor of urban planning at Florida State University, said the total price will be staggering.
The transportation systems of Mississippi and Louisiana sustained the worst damage. State and federal damage assessment teams are being trained and sent into the field, KTBS reported.
I-10 in New Orleans is unusable as the ramps are underwater, and large sections of the eight-mile Twin Span Bridge—roughly 40% of the structure that connects New Orleans with Slidell—collapsed into Lake Pontchartrain.
U.S. 90, a 100-mile stretch of road that runs along the Gulf Coast between New Orleans and Pascagoula, Miss., was destroyed, and the Bay St. Louis-Gulfport and Biloxi-Ocean Springs bridges are gone, KTBS reported.
