Thursday, Aug. 11, 2005 | 9:38 a.m.
The southbound on-ramp at U.S. 95 and Rancho Drive closed at 9 p.m. Wednesday for four months as the Nevada Department of Transportation started a widening project there.
Motorists trying to enter southbound U.S. 95 can go west on Charleston Boulevard or Alta Drive to reach Valley View Boulevard where traffic access to the southbound freeway is available, construction engineer Mohamed Rouas said.
The southbound U.S. 95 entrance will be closed until November, Rouas said.
The work on the Rancho entrance is part of a $50 million project to reconstruct the interchange at Martin Luther King Boulevard and Rancho. The project does not add any lanes and is not part of the U.S. 95 widening project that was blocked until late June by a federal court after the Sierra Club sued, claiming increased air pollution.
The Sierra Club dropped its lawsuit in late June on the $370 million project that is expanding the highway from six to 10 lanes.
A lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club in 2002 had stalled the project after the environmental protection group alleged the agencies did not adequately consider health effects from increased air pollution along the widened interstate.
The settlement hinges on a plan in which the state Transportation Department and the Federal Highway Administration will pay to provide greater safeguards against air pollution at three schools adjacent to the highway.
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