Airport has a concrete solution

Jace Radke

Friday, May 14, 2004 | 8:46 a.m.

Enough concrete to pave a sidewalk from Las Vegas to San Diego will be poured into one of McCarran International Airport's runways and some of its taxiways as part of a nearly $40 million improvement project, officials said Thursday.

The U.S. Transportation Department awarded the airport $24.4 million in federal funds for the project that is scheduled for work to begin in about six months and take three years to complete.

"The pavement is losing its ability to carry the weights (of the planes) on them," said Dennis Mewshaw, McCarran's planning manager, who added that the current asphalt pavement on the runway will be replaced with more durable concrete that could last up to 20 years without being replaced.

Concrete will be poured to a depth of 17 inches with a total of 3.2 million cubic feet to be used at the airport.

The runway in question runs along the west side of the airport and is used for takeoffs and landings mainly in the winter and spring when the airport experiences winds from the north and south. Aircraft must take off and land into the wind.

The paving of the runway and taxiways will be done in phases over the next three years to limit the impact the work has on flights, Mewshaw said at a press conference announcing the federal funds.

"We'll do it in sections, and maybe just in the summer and fall, so that if we need it in the winter and spring we'll be able to use it," Mewshaw said.

The airport continues to use the runway, patching ruts in the asphalt as they occur, but a better solution is to repave the runway using concrete, Menshaw said.

"We've had planes get a tire stuck in a rut on the taxiway and we'll have to go out and pull them free," Menshaw said.

The airport will use airport and airline fees to pay for the additional $15 million that the project will cost.

McCarran's second north-south runway is just west of the runway that will be rehabilitated, and was constructed using concrete in 1998. The pair of runways account for about 15 percent of the heavy jet traffic at McCarran and about 80 percent of the private and business flights at the airport.

McCarran's two east-west runways handle the majority of incoming and outgoing airline traffic and are made of asphalt. Long-term plans call for them to be replaced with concrete.