I-15 traffic to be redirected for F Street project

By Ana Ley

Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013 | 7 p.m.

Expect traffic headaches tonight on Interstate 15 when crews start shifting travel patterns as part of the ongoing project to reopen F Street beneath the highway.

At 11 p.m., the D Street/Washington Avenue off-ramp from northbound Interstate 15 will reopen and northbound traffic on Interstate 15 will be moved onto the recently completed northern portion of the F Street Bridge.

The Nevada Department of Transportation will reduce travel to one lane in the project area between Lake Mead Boulevard and the Spaghetti Bowl.

Meanwhile, traffic on the highway’s southbound lanes will be funneled into one lane so crews can set up a temporary rail down the center of the new bridge and paint stripes on the road.

By 6 a.m. Wednesday, northbound and southbound traffic will have two lanes of travel each. Between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, the D Street on-ramp to southbound Interstate 15 will close until spring 2014. The Nevada Department of Transportation recommends using the Martin Luther King Boulevard on-ramp.

Motorists will again be diverted late Wednesday when I-15 southbound traffic is again reduced to one lane at 11 p.m. while crews paint stripes on the road. Two lanes of traffic will open in each direction in by 5 a.m. Thursday.

Crews recently finished building the northbound portion of the new F Street Bridge, during which all traffic was confined to the southbound side of the freeway. The new configuration will facilitate construction of the southbound portion of the F Street Bridge.

Since 2009, support walls for the interstate have physically blocked off the neighborhood around F Street from downtown Las Vegas. The F Street Connection Project will re-establish direct access between downtown Las Vegas and the West Las Vegas community, accommodating pedestrian, bicycle and vehicular traffic. The project includes resurfacing F Street, new sidewalks, curb and gutter installations, decorative lighting and new landscaping north to Washington Avenue. Also, there will be community-approved corridor panels celebrating the history of West Las Vegas.

The project is due to be completed by the end of 2014.