Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Council criticizes priorities for beltway

and Jeff Schweers

LAS VEGAS SUN

Quoting poetry about a "road to nowhere," Councilman Matthew Callister fired a literary broadside at the County Commission.

Callister's tome came in the form of a resolution asking county commissioners to reconsider their approach to building the Las Vegas beltway's southern leg before a section planned for northwest Las Vegas.

County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, however, had negative reviews for the effort, saying the county is committed to the current schedule.

Plans call for building a southern leg of the beltway connecting Interstate 15 with West Tropicana Avenue near Fort Apache Road, and then extending a frontage road north to Summerlin South and Summerlin.

Callister said at the council's Wednesday meeting that no one currently lives in the far southern portion of the county, where the road will be built. The beltway should be started in the northwest, he said, where a booming population regularly jams freeways and surface streets.

"I think that is more likely than not a way to never get the (northern part) of the beltway built," Callister said. "No thanks. We've been taken for a ride before, and we don't want to travel again."

Woodbury, who also sits as chairman of the Regional Transportation Commission, said it would be almost impossible to shift priorities on the beltway in mid-stream.

"It would be totally absurd to vary from the sequence we've developed," he said.

Not only is the county locked into contracts on southern segments of the beltway -- and has sold bonds based on that commitment -- it would take years to complete environmental studies for the northern sections.

"It's very simple," Woodbury said. "The priorities and the planning on the beltway has been on a step-by-step, well-researched basis over a period of many many years."

Both sides claimed the loyalties of Clark County voters, who in 1990 approved ballot Question 10, which created a mix of taxes and fees to generate income for road projects identified in the Master Transportation Plan.

"We're doing exactly what we told voters we were going to do," Woodbury said.

After Question 10 was approved, the city and other government entities all passed resolutions agreeing that the county would construct and build the beltway, Woodbury said.

"The county is only logical, unless you're going to have the state do it," Woodbury said. "The county is the only road-building entity that could do it, because the freeway goes through the jurisdictional boundaries of Henderson, North Las Vegas, Las Vegas and the unincorporated county. The county is the only entity that represents all that area. Every voter in the community votes for a county commissioner."

But Callister said the county is betraying the residents of Las Vegas, Clark County and North Las Vegas, who have to suffer the gridlock that a beltway could relieve. He asked City Attorney Brad Jerbic to investigate changing the law to allow the city to receive and spend Question 10 money.

Callister noted that documents selling the Question 10 proposal said "the fair share funding program will ensure that everyone who benefits from improved transportation will contribute a fair share of the cost."

According to city officials, Las Vegas taxpayers have contributed $21 million of the $56 million raised under Question 10, or 38 percent. With delays, the cost of buying land for the beltway in the northwest is increasing and could double after five years, officials said.

Mayor Jan Laverty Jones, along with Callister a frequent county critic, also supported separating the city's Question 10 money.

"It hasn't given any (traffic) reduction when it comes to the city taxpayer," she said.

But Woodbury said even recent traffic studies confirm the southern and southwestern legs of the beltway should go as planned.

"All studies and traffic projections show the southern leg is urgently needed," he said. Even if the northern segments could go under construction tomorrow, it wouldn't solve the northwest's traffic problems.

"There would be very little benefit realized to the current population for the northern leg of the beltway because it's so far out," he said. "The southern leg, by contrast, goes right to the heart of where people are going."

The county had traffic engineers and Public Works run numbers last year when commissioners Paul Christensen and Jay Bingham asked the same question now being asked by the city, Woodbury said.

"The southern leg is where people get the most benefits," he said.

The county commission did vote in January to modify the southwestern leg of the beltway as a frontage road -- saving millions of dollars that could be used to accelerate extending into the north and west, Woodbury said.

"I understand how the city wants to address its immediate traffic congestion problems, but this is not one of those ways that will be productive."

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