Residents win fight for traffic slowdown

Erin Neff

Wednesday, Oct. 28, 1998 | 11:45 a.m.

John Leto was so fed up with motorists speeding down his residential street that he hammered a sign into his front lawn declaring, "It's 25, stupid."

Leto, 78, and his neighbors in the Upland Boulevard area got a higher-tech version of his warning Tuesday, one that is costing $800,000 in city funds. It's a five-month construction project to return the four-lane street to a residential drive instead of the shortcut to U.S. 95 it has become.

A series of circular median islands will be installed and pavements, curbs and gutters will be repaired. The project kicked off Tuesday with city officials and residents meeting near Gary Dexter Park. A backhoe piled a mound of dirt behind them as cars slowed past an electronic sign showing their speed.

"This is going to be a great improvement, not just for the residents on Upland Boulevard, but for all of Las Vegas," Leto said. "When they have Little League baseball here every night in the summer, there are kids everywhere."

Without the road improvements, Leto said, the combination of schoolchildren at Red Rock Elementary, errant baseballs and vehicles clipping by at 40 mph could be deadly.

City Councilman Michael McDonald's office has been working with the Charleston Heights neighbors for three years on plans for the project.

"We're enacting the suggestions the neighbors brought forward," said Doug Rankin, community liaison for McDonald's Ward One.

Upland, which is 70 feet wide, has become the alternate route of choice for motorists trying to avoid the traffic lights on Jones or Decatur boulevards.

"Some mornings when the light at Charleston is red, the traffic is backed up all the way past Alta," said Norm Grover, 77, who has lived on Osprey Circle for 52 years. "The people started to use Upland to avoid the traffic."

During one 48-hour period, the city counted 5,300 vehicles with an average speed of 38 mph along Upland between Charleston and Mallard Street.

Originally, neighbors requested that the city install speed humps like ones constructed on cross street Evergreen Avenue. That idea was rejected because of the fire station on Upland and because of the road's extensive width.

Engineering designs call for Upland to be reduced to two lanes, with on-street parking allowed on both sides and a center lane crafted to hold the circular islands. The islands -- to be the first of their kind citywide -- will be less than a foot high and filled with rocks.

Not everyone was happy with the design.

"It's just going to create obstacles for people to hit," said John Parker, who has lived on Idle Avenue for 34 years. "There are a lot better ways the city could have spent $800,000."

McDonald told neighbors he was giving them what they asked for, adding, "The street rehab is long overdue."

John McNellis, deputy director of Public Works, said the "traffic calming" project is included in budgeted funding for Neighborhood Renaissance Programs.

"We want to do projects that the neighborhood desires," McNellis said.

McDonald's staff is working with the Richfield Boulevard neighborhood near Palace Station and with residents in the Buffalo Drive/Oakey Boulevard area who have voiced similar concerns about traffic.

"I think we can do something about making the road more liveable," Public Works Director Richard Goecke said.