Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2003 | 11:01 a.m.
Transportation planners say Southern Nevadans should be able to celebrate on Jan. 20, in the spring of 2006 and sometime in 2007.
Those are the times when three of the region's biggest transportation projects -- the Las Vegas Monorail, Henderson "Spaghetti Bowl" and Hoover Dam Bypass, respectively -- are expected to be completed and open for public use.
But things could get worse before they get better for some motorists because of construction delays that will be caused by the Henderson project. Transportation officials are hoping that a a new website will help motorists know when to use alternative routes to avoid the traffic jams.
Participants in the 2003 Fall Transportation Conference at the Cox Pavilion on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, campus learned about the website and were given other updates Tuesday on the three massive transportation projects.
The $360 million monorail project that is being funded mostly by Strip resorts is set for a Jan. 20 opening. Las Vegas Monorail Co. spokesman Todd Walker said the only thing that could delay the opening would be requests from the monorail company for last-minute construction changes.
The project is 5 percent below budget, and the construction is on schedule, he said. Testing began on portions of the system in April. Testing of the entire four-mile, seven-station monorail is expected by the end of September.
The route, which runs in the Strip corridor, will be able to carry passengers from the MGM Grand on the south end to the Sahara on the north end in 13.5 minutes. Passengers will ride in driverless four-vehicle trains that will carry roughly 55 people per vehicle. The system is expected to carry up to 55,000 passengers a day and 19.5 million a year at fares of no more than $3 per ride or $10 for a daily pass.
Walker, whose company will operate the monorail, said advertising on the trains and in the stations will be a major source of revenue for the system. Extensions of the monorail to downtown's Fremont Street Experience and to McCarran International Airport are also being planned, with the full system expected to be operational by 2012, he said.
From an environmental perspective, Walker said the monorail should reduce traffic and air pollution.
"It's not going to solve all transportation problems but it will allow Las Vegas to grow," Walker said. "We'll be able to add a lot of people without adding roads."
About the time the monorail is going through its full-system check, the Nevada Department of Transportation is expected to break ground on a $116 million project that will make it easier for motorists to travel to and from U.S. 95 (Interstate 515) and the Las Vegas Beltway (Interstate 215) in Henderson.
Groundbreaking for Henderson's "Spaghetti Bowl" is set for Sept. 26, with completion expected by spring 2006. The project will involve completion of the final two miles of the southern beltway from Stephanie Street to U.S. 95, including an overpass at Gibson Road and fly-over ramps connecting the two highways.
Transportation department project manager Scott Rawlins said complaints are already coming in from residents near Gibson Road because the overpass will block their views of the Las Vegas Valley.
Those won't be the last complaints about the project, however. With 120,000 vehicles passing through that interchange daily, Rawlins also said traffic delays are to be expected during the construction. He cautioned that there will be road closures and detours for periods of up to 30 days during construction.
In addition to keeping the public informed about those delays through public meetings, Rawlins said individuals with Internet access can keep tabs of the project by accessing the website www.215515project.com. Nine cameras will allow website visitors to see images of the construction project, and the images will be refreshed every minute, officials said.
"You can get on the website and look at the web cams and they'll tell you what's going on," Rawlins said.
Rawlins said the other good news is that the winning bidder for the construction of the Henderson interchange, Washington Group International of Boise, Idaho, came in with an $82.2 million bid that was about $4 million below state cost estimates.
But money is still an issue with the $240 million Hoover Dam Bypass project, which has already received $100 million in federal funding and commitments of $20 million each from Nevada and Arizona. The project still needs $100 million in federal money to be completed by 2007, said project manager Dave Zanetell, who works for the Central Federal Lands Highway Division of the Federal Highway Administration.
When completed, motorists will endure fewer switchbacks along the 3.5-mile bypass than they do now and will be taken over a bridge that crosses the Colorado River 1,500 feet downstream from the dam. The major aims of the project are to relieve traffic along the dam, which draws 6 million visitors annually, and reduce accidents.
Zanetell said the Arizona portion of the road project is already 50 percent complete and is expected to be finished by October 2004. Construction on the Nevada side is expected to begin in October and is expected to take 2 1/2 years to complete, he said. The remaining federal money is needed to build the 1,900-foot bridge.
The progress of the project can be observed at the website for that project, www.hooverdambypass.org.
"One of the biggest challenges on the job is the interagency coordination," Zanetell said. "We have engineering and technical challenges, aesthetic and cultural challenges and fiscal limitations."
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