New bridge needs improvements in pedestrian safety

Edward Miller, Las Vegas

Friday, Dec. 10, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.

As a Las Vegan since 1973 and a retired physician, I greatly appreciate the Las Vegas Sun’s reporting on heath and safety in Las Vegas. However, I think the Nov. 29 story about the potentially increased suicide risk at the new Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Bridge was well-intentioned but off the mark.

There is essentially no effective suicide prevention for people walking across the nearby Hoover Dam, or hiking the mountains close by. Indeed, suicides at Hoover Dam occasionally occur.

Suicide prevention is vitally important, but I do not think building a higher wall on the bridge or placing a net beneath it, as was suggested in the Sun’s story, would effectively decrease the number of suicides.

To improve safety at the bridge, we should instead focus on protecting pedestrians. An effective way to do so would be to add a pedestrian crossing from the Historic Railroad Trail to the bridge’s pedestrian entrance.

Just across the road from that pedestrian entrance is a drop-off/pickup station for hikers on the Historic Railroad Trail that leads from the Alan Bible Visitor Center to the dam.

But, to cross that road to get from the trail to the bridge-walk entrance, people must dodge the cars driving to the dam. There is no pedestrian crossing, no speed-limit reduction, no yellow or red light, and no pedestrian bridge.

Hikers cross that road now, dangerously. Seeing the spectacular view of the dam from the bridge, and viewing the beautiful bridge from the dam, add much to the visit. In the future, visitors who have driven to the dam may also want to walk to the bridge. This is not possible via the road, only via the trail.