BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — Lawmakers heard from Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development officials and consultants about the latest on the Mississippi River Bridge project on Monday afternoon.

Legislators also got updates on the three remaining possible bridge locations and financial spending. The sites being considered are in Iberville Parish, within a few miles of each other in St. Gabriel.

Kara Morey, an official with Atlas Technical Consultants, said that all three alternative locations have benefits.

“No. 1, they basically all meet our purpose in need of our study, which is increased capacity and improve connectivity. The improvement in just connecting the two banks of the river, there’s definitely a need there. It’s another alternate route for incident management. You know, if I-10 is closed, there’s only so many ways you can get across back and forth so definitely improve that,” she said.

Morey said the project is expected to save over one million hours of travel time annually.

“The greatest singular travel time benefit is projected to be on that LA-1 northbound in the afternoon peak hour,” she said.

Morey said that it could be by spring of 2024 before it’s narrowed down to one location.

Corey Landry, the project manager for the LA-1/LA-415 Connector Project, said that construction for the project could take three years.