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By Kyle B. Hansen (contact) 
Saturday, June 18, 2011 | 2 a.m.
Construction
Sun Coverage
One lane at the start of Summerlin Parkway will be closed for 20 days as crews work on a new ramp to connect the U.S. 95 high-occupancy vehicle lanes to the parkway.
The new ramp will allow motorists on northbound U.S. 95 to get to the parkway directly from the HOV lanes rather than merging across the rest of U.S. 95 to get to the regular exit. The project does not include adding HOV lanes to Summerlin Parkway.
Beginning Sunday evening, crews will be building a bridge pier and retaining wall close to the existing left lane on the ramp that connects U.S. 95 to the parkway. The closure will help crews safely work in the area, Nevada Department of Transportation officials said.
The closure will continue from the start of the ramp to the Buffalo Drive exit on the parkway.
The project is scheduled to be completed next summer.
I don't expect this new ramp to get much use. I have observed the traffic going into Summerlin from US95 and the vast majority of the BMW's only have a single occupant.
PLEASE no more new road construction projects until the old ones are completed! We are running out of options to avoid construction and traffic.
This is gonna be a REAL PROBLEM...
20 days of people playing bumper cars. Might just as well post a NHP car and a tow truck or 3 right nearby right from the get-go.
Cars fighting to merge right to get to the Parkway exit is a constant battle - even when traffic is relatively light. Sure, it's going to be a challenge during construction, but the end result will be a tremendous addition to our transportation infrastructure
There are two problems at that junction and the larger one they aren't fixing. Traffic from 95 South looping onto the Parkway is racing up from the right. If you're in the HOV forget it, but even if you're in the right lane of 95 North you've got traffic merging from the right if you're trying to exit right onto the parkway.
So basically this project ties things up for more than a year to only help the HOV lane merging across from the left and does nothing for the 95 South loop merging into 95 North exiting traffic.
If it's going to be under construction for a year, you'd think they could engineer a broader, safer solution.