According to Ehuacom, Shreveport is a city in the United States, located in northwestern Louisiana. Shreveport has a population of 184,000, with an urban agglomeration of 389,000 inhabitants (2021).
Introduction
According to mcat-test-centers, Shreveport is located in northwestern Louisiana on the Red River, a short distance from the Texas border and slightly more distant from the Arkansas border. The city is the largest in northern Louisiana, and the most important within a 250-mile radius. Shreveport is the center of northern Louisiana’s oil and gas industry and is home to Barksdale Air Force Base.
The town is located in a fairly flat area, mostly forested, except around the Red River, where the terrain is more open, with agriculture. Shreveport has only a few small suburbs. The Shreveport region used to be known as an important part of the US oil industry, but with the fall in oil prices in the 1980s, its importance declined, although the oil industry is still strongly represented. The government is Shreveport’s largest employer, of the 10 largest employers in Shreveport, only the eighth and ninth largest employers are non-government related.
Road network
The interchange between I-20 and I-49.
Shreveport has an extensive highway network for a city of this size. Shreveport is located off Interstate 20, which runs east from Dallas to Monroe and Jackson. Interstate 49 comes from the south and is the primary link to the rest of Louisiana, including Alexandria, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and New Orleans. Interstate 220 forms Shreveport’s northern bypass, which is not much longer than I-20.
Shreveport also has a southwestern bypass, State Route 3132, also known as the Inner Loop Expressway. An obvious missing link in the structure of the road network around Shreveport is a southeastern bypass.
Shreveport has two major stack interchanges, the I-20/I-49 interchange near downtown and the I-49/SR-3132 interchange south of Shreveport. I-20 and I-49 have 2×3 lanes, elsewhere there are 2×2 lanes on SR-3132 and I-220.
The major other roads through Shreveport are US 71, US 79, US 80, and US 171. State Route 1 also passes through Shreveport.
History
The first highway to be developed was Interstate 20 as an east-west route through Shreveport in the 1960s. Shreveport’s bypass, I-220, was developed from the early 1970s, but was not completed until 1991 when the long bridge over Cross Lake opened. Interstate 49 is also relatively young, having opened in Shreveport in the early 1990s. Then the two big stacks were made. State Route 3132 was built primarily in the 1980s and 1990s.
For a long time, Shreveport had only one freeway, the I-20. The other highways were mainly opened around 1990. No highways have been widened in Shreveport yet. More recently, I-49 was built north of Shreveport to Texarkana. Since 2018, I-49 to Arkansas has been directly connected to the rest of Shreveport’s highway network.
Future
There are two major traffic issues in and around Shreveport, the construction of I-49 through Shreveport and north of it, and how I-69 will be routed around Shreveport. It makes sense to run I-69 along the east side of Shreveport, creating a full ring road.
Congestion
There is hardly any congestion in Shreveport. The highways are adequate, although the I-20 has outdated design requirements. The road with the highest I/C ratio is I-20 in eastern Shreveport, with some 70,000 vehicles in 2×2 lanes.
Traffic intensities
Shreveport’s busiest point is downtown I-20 with 105,000 vehicles per day. Elsewhere, the intensities are usually between 30,000 and 75,000 vehicles, making Shreveport not a very busy city. The I-220 around the north side of Shreveport is not very busy with 30,000 to 40,000 vehicles.