BATON ROUGE mdash; Street lights along stretches of I-10, I-12, and I-110 have been out for months, and viewers have been reaching out to WBRZ asking why they're still driving in the dark.State Rep. Dixon McMakin went out to see the problem firsthand."Here's a light right here. No light on a pole. What do you know? Back-to-back, no light on a pole. What do you know? Continued failures, unacceptable anymore in East Baton Rouge Parish," McMakin said.McMakin said drivers can and should expect the state government to fix issues such as this."If you were at your house trying to fix a light, you'd go and get it done," he said.For McMakin, it comes down to one thing."It's all about the safety of our drivers that are out there moving in and around our city and through our city. We want people to be safe, and having proper lighting can do that," McMakin said.East Baton Rouge Parish Transportation Director Fred Raiford acknowledged the problem."We just don't have the staffing. You know the capability of doing that, you know we have to have somebody to be able to understand the logistics of that, and we have three or four companies that we are looking at and we are trying to talk to them to find ways to see if we can get them on board to make these repairs," Raiford said.McMakin said if the current system isn't working, another approach should be considered."Of course it's in my district and so I think that's what the people liked me to go do, and to see, is to say how can we be better, what can we do, and if the state needs to take it back over from the city let's do that and let's see if we can do that more efficient and more effective," he said.The complaints that first filled the WBRZ inbox months ago haven't gone away. Raiford said the effort to get the lights back on continues."But we're making every effort to do what we can do to get the lights back on," Raiford said.Raiford said the parish hopes to identify an outside company to help speed up repairs by the end of July.Permalink| Comments ...read more read less