BATON ROUGE - In an unusually brief ride down I-110 to I-10 and the College Drive area Wednesday night, Mayor Kip Holden took advantage of the president's ear to ask for help with a series of issues - most notably, the monster that is traffic.

"The situation has reached such a point that it creates a significant danger to the traveling public," the mayor told the president as they drove through the corridor. The mayor said President Obama was supportive of listening and discussing any possible federal solution to the troubles.

On any given day, traffic is stopped or barely moving on either side of the Mississippi River and sometimes miles east and west down I-10.

The conversation was quick, Holden said, so he wrote a letter to the president that he delivered to him when they met Thursday morning at McKinley High School. The president spent about two hours at the school for a town hall forum and then an Internet question and answer session.

In his letter, Holden highlighted the traffic issues again and also the development of a hospital district, the Water Campus in Old South Baton Rouge, the planning of a tram line along Nicholson between downtown and LSU as well as research at Pennington Biomedical Center. The mayor asked for help funding projects associated with each project.

Click HERE to read the letter and watch the attached video to see an interview with mayor during WBRZ News 2 at 4:00 Wednesday. 

**************

Follow the publisher of this post on Twitter: @treyschmaltz