(FORTUNE Small Business) – It took an entrepreneurial eye to see an opportunity in the miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic clogging Baton Rouge's main thoroughfares. Local transportation engineer Mike Bruce, 48, co-owner of 100-employee ABMB Engineering, has designed continuous-flow intersections, or CFIs, a novel concept for reducing traffic congestion by reconfiguring busy crossroads to allow left-turning and opposing through traffic to move at the same time. Last September, Bruce's firm won a bid to design four CFI intersections as part of a pilot project for the Louisiana Department of Transportation. "We've all been conditioned to do things one way," says Bruce, whose firm also has bids in with several other states, such as Ohio and Mississippi, to construct CFIs. "But this is a solid, well-researched idea whose time has come." --RON STODGHILL