Boulder Highway in line for upgrades

Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2004 | 11:16 a.m.

Boulder Highway is almost as old as Las Vegas, and has as many honky-tonks, weekly apartments, casinos and used-car lots as any stretch of road in the urban area.

The Regional Transportation Commission hopes to give the highway a face lift, and as part of the effort will hold a community meeting to present recommendations and to hear suggestions from the community. Lee Gibson and Bardia Nezhati, transportation planners for Parsons Brinckerhoff, a national engineering company, said they and the RTC spent a year looking at Boulder Highway's needs.

They came down to two primary recommendations, Gibson said. First, the community along Boulder Highway needs access to public transportation, so those services need to be improved. Secondly, the intersections need work, to accommodate vehicles and pedestrians.

Gibson said the planners' recommendation is for something similar to the Metropolitan Area Express, or MAX, system that is expected to begin service on Las Vegas Boulevard between downtown and Nellis Air Force Base next month. The MAX system is a hybrid of light-rail train and bus that will use dedicated lanes to go up and down the highway.

The Boulder Highway neighborhoods are prime candidates for a similar system, he said.

"It is very evident that the neighborhoods surrounding Boulder Highway have lower incomes and less automobile ownership," Gibson said. Improvements to transit and transportation in those neighborhoods have to be "tailored to reinforcing the neighborhoods, providing access to jobs ... preserving what is best about the neighborhood and at the same time contributing to the economy."

Nezhati said work on the road can probably be done with the existing right-of-way, so businesses will not have to make way for road improvements.

He said intersections will be a major focus of the 17 miles studied, from Fremont Street and Las Vegas Boulevard to Railroad Pass near Boulder City. Fremont Street becomes Boulder Highway at Sahara Avenue.

One proposal is to take Eastern Avenue over or under the busy Five Points area, where Charleston Boulevard, Fremont Street and Eastern meet, he said.

Nezhati said also needing improvement are crosswalks, sidewalks and other facilities for pedestrians and bicyclists.

"Along the whole corridor, there are segments of sidewalks that are missing," he said.

Erin Breen, a traffic safety expert at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said accidents involving pedestrians are becoming more frequent along the highway, particularly on the busy north part of the road, which has many weekly-rent apartment complexes.

"There is a huge pedestrian fatality problem on Boulder Highway," Breen said. "Along Boulder Highway you have a lot of people who live by the week. People have to get across the highway for their needs."

"If they are going to change it, they need to build that into their plans," she said.

In 2002 on the stretch of Boulder Highway from Tropicana Avenue to Desert Inn Road there were 731 crashes, 32 of them involving pedestrians, Breen said.

Some of the people who live and work on the highway agreed with Breen.

Sharon Wright, a manager at the Boulder Palms apartments for seniors, about a half-mile south of Desert Inn Road, said many of her residents walk or use wheelchairs to get across the highway to Arizona Charlie's and Boulder Station.

"The only thing my residents want is something so they can get across the Boulder Highway here, safely, with their wheelchairs," she said. "I've got a lot of people in wheelchairs."

Wright said crosswalks are too far apart on the highway, so people have to go a long way to reach one before they can cross safely.

Hal Rothman, UNLV history department chairman, agreed.

"It's an increasing problem," he said. "Crosswalks are too far apart."

Boulder Highway today caters primarily to car traffic, he said. At one time that might have made sense.

When the federal government was building what is now Hoover Dam in the 1920s and 1930s, Boulder Highway was the main road between Las Vegas and the worksite.

"It was a thoroughfare of enormous importance," Rothman said. That importance dimmed with the construction of Interstate 515 -- usually known as U.S. 95 -- in the 1980s.

"It has really changed," he said. "Boulder Highway has become a wide arterial connector."

Gibson said one reason Boulder Highway is being studied now is that the Nevada Department of Transportation is looking at improvements along I-515, which runs parallel to the older road.

It makes sense to study the two roads together because whatever work is done to the interstate will affect the local street network, Gibson said. He added that people visiting the RTC's meeting Wednesday will get information about both Boulder Highway and I-515 improvements. Gibson said the RTC and engineers working on the study continue to welcome public comment.

The federal government is funding 95 percent of the $250,000 Boulder Highway study, RTC spokeswoman Ingrid Reisman said.