Agency begins study of highway bypass

Jace Radke

Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2000 | 12:39 p.m.

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The Nevada Department of Transportation will take public comment on the proposed improvements to U.S. Highway 93 in Boulder City and Henderson from 4 to 7 p.m. today in room 100 of the Community College of Southern Nevada Boulder City Campus, 700 Wyoming St.

NDOT is preparing a draft environmental impact statement on the project.

For years the residents of Boulder City have dealt with the ever-increasing traffic that rolls through their city that sits on the main route between the fast-growing metropolitan areas of Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Looking for relief from the increased pollution and noise that the traffic brings, 61 percent of the city's residents voted to give the state their blessing to construct a bypass freeway or some other means of getting the unwanted traffic out of their hair.

Now the Nevada Department of Transportation is moving forward with a study of the U.S. 93 corridor that runs through Boulder City in an effort to determine the best way to steer the traffic away from the city, NDOT project manager Tom Greco said.

"This study is an open book," Greco said at Tuesday night's City Council meeting. "We will look at all options available to us to mitigate the traffic coming through here.

"At first this was called a bypass project, but that limited the possibilities so we changed it to a corridor study. We'll look at parallel routes, truck routes and how they can impact the traffic."

The study will take in 11 miles of U.S 93 starting just over Railroad Pass in Henderson and moving east through Boulder City to the Hacienda hotel-casino, formerly the Gold Strike, Greco said.

NDOT and contractor CH2M Hill will spend the next several months gathering information, beginning with today's public comment meeting.

"We will have several public information meetings throughout the process where we will relate to the community and identify issues and concerns," CH2M Hill project manager Michael Lasko said.

Once preliminary public comment is gathered, a draft environmental impact statement detailing the project will be put together by early 2001. A final EIS, which will have to be approved by the Environmental Protection Agency, should be completed by the beginning of 2002.

After that, if everything is approved, construction could begin on a possible bypass freeway.

Councilman Bryan Nix questioned why NDOT decided not to pursue major improvements to State Route 163 in Laughlin and U.S. 95 so that Arizona traffic could be diverted through Laughlin.

"We don't look at 95 and Laughlin as a viable bypass because of the extra 23 miles that trucks would have to travel," Greco said.

A major improvement project that will make U.S. 95 a four-lane divided roadway to Searchlight from its junction with U.S. 93 west of Boulder City is already planned but does not greatly affect the traffic through Boulder City.

Also planned is a new bridge that would allow traffic to cross the Colorado River at another point besides Hoover Dam. This dam bypass is not expected to be completed until 2006 at the earliest, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

The dam bypass would likely connect to whatever bypass freeway NDOT decides on, while the Hoover Dam route would still take motorists through Boulder City.