House passes highway bill with $1.3 billion for Nevada

Suzanne Struglinski

Monday, April 5, 2004 | 9:47 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The House passed a six-year highway bill last week that contains $1.3 billion for Nevada projects and includes an extra $90 million earmarked for projects in Southern Nevada.

Reps. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., and Jon Porter, R-Nev., voted in favor of the $275 billion bill, although the White House has threatened to veto it. The bill still needs to go through negotiations between selected House and Senate members to iron out differences and produce a final piece of legislation.

Porter and Berkley both sit on the House Transportation Committee and each claimed credit for an additional $45 million over the next six years for Southern Nevada projects. That money is in addition to the $1.3 billion that the state Transportation Department parcels out to projects statewide.

For projects in her district, Berkley added to the bill $16.5 million for Las Vegas Beltway interchanges, $5.5 million for the Martin Luther King Boulevard and Industrial Road Connector, $5.5 million for the Craig Road Overpass, $6 million for the Interstate 15 widening from U.S. 95 to Speedway Boulevard, $5 million for widening of U.S. 95 from Craig Road to the beltway and $3 million for the Las Vegas Center City Intermodal Terminal.

Projects in Porter's district include $21 million for the U.S. 95-Interstate 215 interchange in Henderson, $10 million for the I-15 interchange with Cactus Avenue, $6 million for the U.S. 95 interchange with Horse Road in Las Vegas, $6 million for the Hoover Dam Bypass and its Boulder City extension, $1.5 million for Lake Mead Parkway Improvements in Henderson and $500,000 for I-15 interchanges in Mesquite.

The bill also contains guaranteed funding for the Las Vegas monorail system and funding for a magnetic levitation train project somewhere in the nation. The bill provides $15 million for the first year and $20 million for each of the next five years for the maglev, according to Berkley's office.

Gibbons also secured $9 million for Northern Nevada projects, according to his office.