Columnist Susan Snyder: Resist the urge to expand

Friday, July 30, 2004 | 5:18 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

WEEKEND EDITION

July 31 - Aug. 1, 2004

Before road-weary commuters grumble about the Sierra Club lawsuit delaying widening of U.S. 95, they ought to consider some of the reasons the group demands better study of the project:

Asthma. Cancer. More traffic congestion and the problems it creates.

Wider highways aren't always better.

And if nothing else, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision to delay the paving that will take the highway from six to 10 lanes through the center of Las Vegas gives us time to think.

About what? Reconsidering our choices.

See, state transportation officials aren't giving us any choices beyond more pavement because they don't believe we want any. They have said there is no market for light rail or better transit or non-motorized travel.

It seems only gridlock sells in Southern Nevada. So we're getting what we wish for: Six lanes of congestion that soon will become 10 lanes of congestion. Think the rush hour will improve with more concrete?

Think again. It's why they call it "rush hour."

Earlier this year a local Sierra Club official told me the reason the club's legal staff is mounting the U.S. 95 fight is because it has national ramifications in addition to local ones. Better study is needed nationwide of how expanding freeways affects health and the environment.

In a March 2003 U.S. Senate Environmental and Public Works committee hearing on federal air quality programs, Sierra Club spokeswoman Melody Flowers told of the "mounting number of studies that examine health and safety questions" surrounding the expansion of highways near schools, hospitals and other places children and the elderly congregate and live.

"These studies link air pollution near high-traffic areas to cancer, asthma, heart attacks and low-birth-weight babies for people who live in nearby communities," Flowers said.

Among the research cited was a 2000 study from Denver that showed children who lived within 250 yards of streets or highways that carry 20,000 vehicles per day were six times more likely to develop all types of cancer and eight times more likely to develop leukemia. The 16 studies cited show correlations between highways and increased incidents of cancer, asthma and other respiratory maladies.

The Las Vegas Valley has among the nation's highest rates of asthma and lung cancer. Part of it is dust. Part of it is due to having more smokers than the rest of the country. And part of it is due to the number of motor vehicles emitting garbage into our air.

Tourism, we are told, gives us no choice but to put up with the smoking. Our desert environment, we are told, gives us no choice but to deal with the dust.

The number of cars on the road? That is totally up to us.

It is hard to consider the possibility of asthma or leukemia in some child we don't know when the reality just beyond our bumpers is a stopped line of traffic winding to the horizon.

That's the good part about the Sierra Club sticking its nose in. All of us have a chance to look longer and closer at the choices we make.

And three years from now as we sit in 10 lanes of gridlock, frustrated that we don't have any other choices, we need to remember it's because transportation officials thought we didn't want any.