Transportation agency wants feedback on traffic growth

Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2001 | 10:41 a.m.

Public meetings

The Nevada Department of Transportation is looking for help from the public to improve traffic management in the northeast Las Vegas Valley.

The agency has launched an $800,000 study of what the road needs are now and will be in future decades, when strong job and population growth is expected in the region. The agency is seeking feedback at several public meetings on the best ways to handle the traffic growth. The area is anchored by Interstate 15, and bordered by Bonanza Road to the south, Apex and the beltway to the north, Martin Luther King Boulevard to the west and Nellis Air Force Base to the east.

"We're basically looking at the whole northeast quadrant of the valley," said Kent Cooper, NDOT project manager for the I-15 Northeast Corridor Study.

Cooper said the needs assessment is likely to significantly expand the costs for road and transit improvements already tagged to the region -- $450 million, in the latest 20-year Regional Transportation Plan.

Already, the Craig Road and Lake Mead Boulevard interchanges with I-15 are over their designed traffic capacity, Cooper said.

Roger Patton, a traffic consultant with the Washington, D.C.-based Louis Berger Group, said the northeast area has "nowhere near the capacity problems of other parts of the valley."

"Our biggest problems come when we take a look at the future," Patton said.

The northeast's share of the rapidly expanding population of the valley will probably stay at around 12 percent of the total, he said.

But the percentage of jobs could double as more industry settles into the area, from 9 percent now to 18 percent. Patton said the area is one of the few in the valley that is slated for large-scale industrial and commercial development.

"We don't have the infrastructure in place at all to service that level of development," he said.

Some of the anticipated work will be to I-15, including anticipated expansion between Lake Mead Boulevard and Apex. Cooper said two or three interchanges are likely needed in addition to the seven already in place on that stretch of the highway.

The plan should take a year to 18 months to complete, Cooper said, and will look at mass transit, bicycle and pedestrian needs, as well as traditional "rubber tires on the highway," he said.

That's where the public comes in. Over the next three or four months, the state agency wants feedback to identify what services are or will be needed for the region, he said.

"The key for any of these studies is for the public to come out and participate," Cooper said.