BATON ROUGE - A town hall meeting was held Wednesday evening to discuss the city of Baton Rouge and MoveBR's $25 million expansion of Mickens Road.

The first phase will focus on improving traffic flow by widening the shoulder from Hooper Road to Joor Road. There are also plans to add streetlights, sidewalks and a three lane section from Lanier to Hooper and more.

About 11,000 cars pass on Mickens Road everyday and it's subject to heavy traffic, which is one of the main complaints among drivers.

"These are there tax dollars, this is their road and we want to make sure we do what gives them access to get from A to B as fast as they can," District 5 Metro-Councilmember Darryl Hurst said.

Transportation and Drainage Director Fred Raiford says they want to do as much as they can with the money that is being provided and what they need most is community input.

"I think it's important to have community involvement. That's the way the program was set up to be structured," he said.

Public concerns include adding red lights, the length of time the project will take and how the project will be coordinated. Raiford says they will take these concerns as they review the project.

"We want to give people that opportunity to look at what we're proposing. Giving us their inputs so we can look at how we can finish up the design," he said.

The planning stage of the project can take up to two years to complete. There will be more public meetings before final decisions are made.