Researchers: Traffic could slow down valley’s growth

Stephen Curran

Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2005 | 11:04 a.m.

Congestion on Las Vegas highways could put the brakes on the Southern Nevada's bustling economy within the next decade, a national transportation research group said Tuesday.

The Road Information Project, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, reviewed statistics from a number of state and federal agencies and nearly flunked Nevada for its rate of traffic congestion and safety, areas in which the state earned a "D+" and "D" respectively.

According to the report, entitled "Driving Nevada's Future," the next 10 years don't look much better. During that time, Nevadans can expect to see the state come up almost $3 billion short of the roughly $10 billion in revenue that the Nevada Transportation Department will need to help local roads keep pace with the number of cars flooding the state's highways, TRIP researchers said.

The net result could be Nevada's first large-scale commercial exodus since the current population explosion began in the 1990s, Frank Moretti, TRIP's director of policy and research, said.

"When it comes to quality of life, one of the first things they're going to talk about is traffic," Moretti said. "If they (business leaders) feel it's becoming increasingly difficult to get into and out of a region, they're going to move to areas where it's more accessible."

Jeff Fontaine, director of the state Transportation Department, questioned how the group arrived at its individual grades for Nevada and also said he was unsure how the nonprofit group arrived at many of its conclusions about his agency's fiscal future.

He said many of his department's upcoming projects, including those covered under the three-year Transportation Improvement Program and another $650 million in projects expected to go to bid, were too far out to accurately predict where the money would come from.

"What's happening here is they're looking beyond what the current program is and looking out 10 years in the future," Fontaine said. "There are a lot of things that come up in the development of major projects. ... It's just premature."

The TRIP findings came after another study by the Texas Transportation Institute in September found the overall amount of time drivers spent behind the wheel decreased from 28 hours in 2001 to 27 in 2002.

The Texas study commended the Regional Transportation Commission's efforts to increase the frequency of the Citizen Area Transit public bus routes while NDOT officials noted a jump in the number of lane miles on area freeways.

But like much of the country, Nevada appears to be hanging its hopes on a Congressional bill that would reauthorize the Transportation Equity Act of the 21st Century which, if approved, would increase the state's highway revenues by $300 million and TRIP researchers say could close the shortfall by roughly 10 percent.

Fontaine agreed that the bill is crucial to helping the state agency solidify many of its long-term plans.

"It is set for six years," he said. "It's a long-term authorization so it's not just an annual program. The whole point is to give states better assurance that they can count on this funding over a longer period of time."

The Regional Transportation Commission in 2002 pushed the Question 10 tax package to pay for improvements in local infrastructure as federal funds routinely fell short, Ingrid Reisman, an RTC spokeswoman, said.

The $2.7 billion tax package approved by voters included an increase in jet fuel tax, a quarter-cent fuel tax and redirected money from an existing property tax from the county's general fund to one dedicated to transportation projects, she said.

Among the projects it funded was an increase in the number of high-speed lane miles, new buses and the RTC's Metropolitan Area Express system, a train-like bus that has its own dedicated lane. That marked the county agency's first foray into fixed-guideway service, Reisman said.

It's the kind of project the RTC will have to increasingly pursue if it is to keep traffic from stifling local transportation, she said.

"We know we can't pave our way out of congestion," Reisman said. "That's not the approach that will work. We need to take a multi-modal approach."