Transportation agencies brainstorm solutions to growth.

The city of Las Vegas is currently living through a teachable moment in its history, teetering on a precipice between growth and decline, boom and bust. The dusty town that sprang from the desert and rose to prominence as the home of legal gambling is now a metropolis bustling with nearly 2 million residents, not to mention tourists.

Like each facet of Las Vegas in recent years, its roads have struggled to support the population growth. Working both independently and in tandem, the Nevada Department of Transportation and the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada have tackled the issue of transit in the valley.

The bursting of the real estate bubble sent the construction and gaming industries into a tailspin, and many workers have departed for greener pastures, but with President Barack Obama emphasizing the importance of infrastructure projects to the country’s economic recovery, it seems Southern Nevada’s roads are more significant than ever.

Lonesome Highway
The I-15, US-95 and I-215 are the three major freeways that transport Las Vegas residents to school, work and home. In 2007, the Nevada Department of Transportation began construction on the northern stretch of the I-15 north of the Spaghetti Bowl (the well-known point near Downtown Las Vegas where the I-15 and US-95 meet).

Construction on the project, which is intended to widen the I-15 north to Craig Road in order to reduce rush hour traffic on the highway, will be nearly complete toward the end of this year, according to NDOT District I engineer Mary Martini.

“Additional projects are being planned for the area south of the Spaghetti Bowl, but for the traffic in that area and most of the ramp traffic, [the I-15 widening project] will address most of the congestion,” Martini said.

One of the projects set to begin south of the Spaghetti Bowl later this year is the widening of the I-15 south from Tropicana to Blue Diamond. NDOT plans to build a system that will place weaving traffic from short ramps onto collector-distributor roads. In an effort to reduce traffic on the freeways, NDOT has also designated certain sections of US-95 as HOV lanes for carpooling drivers with one or more passengers.

“The HOV lane is an attempt to reduce the amount of congestion during peak times,” Martini said. “You need a certain level of congestion to induce people to take methods to conserve not only their time and fuel but also to travel at either non-peak times or to qualify legitimately to drive in the HOV lane.”

 Widening projects, collector-distributor roads and HOV lanes are expected to reduce congestion on Las Vegas freeways, but NDOT also plans to implement more metered ramps to make traffic flow more consistent during rush hour.

“We still have peak hours, and we are installing ramp meters at the ramps,” Martini said. “Utilizing ramp meters will meter the traffic onto the freeway so it doesn’t cause the flow to stop.”

Ramp meters are under the purview of the Freeway and Arterial Transportation System (FAST), an agency funded by NDOT in partnership with the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada. Managed by the RTC, FAST is responsible for managing traffic flow with lights and meters as well as LED boards that notify highway drivers of accidents and travel times. FAST is one clear example of efficient cooperation between a state and regional entity.

“We really try to approach transportation projects from a regional perspective,” said RTC Director of Public Affairs Tracy Bower. “It doesn’t matter if you’re driving through Las Vegas, North Las Vegas or unincorporated parts of Clark County, we want to make this is as seamless as possible. The beltway is the best example of that. In the 1980s, there was a need for another freeway in the valley, but at the time NDOT didn’t have the funding available to do that. The RTC and our member entities worked together. A ballot initiative was approved by voters and funded the 215 beltway.”

On the Road
The advent of the I-215 and improvements to the I-15 may alleviate congestion on the city’s freeways, but public transit is also necessary to streamline traffic flow in the valley. The RTC’s public transportation options, Citizens Area Transit (CAT) buses; the Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) buses; the Deuce double-decker buses, which run along Las Vegas Boulevard and are largely used by Strip employees and tourists; and the ACE Rapid Transit buses, which will be up and running in 2010, are used by a variety of Las Vegas residents. Approximately 67 million passengers used public transit in 2008.

“There are some people who are considered transit-dependent; we have some people who take transit to work because it’s more convenient than, say, parking in a parking garage and then walking into their place of business,” Bower said. “It helps them to save money.  Some people do it for environmental reasons. You can buy a transit pass and use it as often as you want. But what we hear from all of our commuters is they want services that will get them to where they want to go faster.”

The need to meet passengers’ demands was the impetus behind the new ACE bus system, which combines standard bus transit with the swiftness of a light rail.

“A couple of years ago, the RTC was faced with a decision on what type of new rapid transit service we could provide in the valley, what type of technology we should use, whether light rail was an option,” Bower said. “That was something we looked into, but the cost of a light rail system is very, very high. The board instructed us to move forward with a system that mimics a light rail system, that operates like a light rail system, but has a lower cost to build.”

ACE will connect the Strip and Downtown with the outer parts of the valley; the Gold Line, which is comprised of a series of stops Downtown, is currently under construction and will open early next year.

A park and ride lot and transit facility is currently under construction in the suburb of Centennial Hills, and will enable commuters from the northwest to leave their cars at the RTC facility and take the ACE Express route to Downtown using the HOV lanes on the US-95 southbound. That route will be operational in January 2010.

“One of the challenges we have with the regular bus system, which operates very efficiently, is the buses tend to stop a lot so it makes the trip a little longer,” Bower said. “The express routes are designed to go out into communities where you have a lot of residential development and create a park and ride facility where people can gather at one spot and then connect to the Strip and Downtown. They’re designed for commuters; they’re designed to be fast. The service will be very fast during peak times. They’re designed to go from where a lot of people live to where a lot of people work.”

Stimulating Progress
The ACE Rapid Transit system will benefit from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, part of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package that is expected to jumpstart infrastructure development during the economic slowdown. The Centennial Hills park and ride facility qualified for stimulus funds, enabling the RTC to more quickly construct the northwest Express route.

“Without stimulus money, we would not have been able to construct that facility this year,” Bower said. “We are also using additional stimulus money to construct the ACE Green Line from Downtown Las Vegas along Boulder Highway out to Henderson. That route will have dedicated lanes for part of the route, and then use mixed-flow lanes. We start construction early next year, and it will be completed in 2011.”

The Nevada Department of Transportation also met the conditions for receiving federal funding with a series of landscaping and repaving projects. A Rainbow Curve aesthetic overhaul project will also benefit from the stimulus package, as it was ready to begin when the ARRA was passed.

“Because there were pretty strict timelines—they were much shorter than for local agencies—we had to go with shovel-ready projects that we had ready to go that fit the funding category,” Martini said. “Those were paving projects for the most part. They help a great deal, and they help the economy, but projects are for the most part repaving areas.”

NDOT is also currently applying for additional grant money available through the ARRA for other projects, including the widening of the I-15 south of the Spaghetti Bowl.

Building Out
The current economic climate may have slowed the explosion of growth in the Las Vegas valley, but both Bower and Martini agree that building new roads is not the magic solution for Southern Nevada’s traffic problems. Instead, a multi-pronged approach that encourages considering alternative modes of transportation, and perhaps even lifestyle changes, is necessary.

“There is not a single mode of transportation that will work for everyone,” Bower said. “If you’re going to work at a time that’s against the typical commute, if you’re going a long distance or if you’re driving to a place in the valley where there’s a transit service, a car can be a good option. We also work to provide bike lanes and routes throughout the valley. If you have a lot of people leaving from the same place and going to the same place, it’s a lot more economical for people to share rides to those places.”

With the introduction of the ACE Rapid Transit system, Bower hopes the quality of Las Vegas’ public transportation will soon be comparable to those of other great metropolises with spread-out populations. As a relatively young city, Las Vegas has the opportunity to learn from transportation systems in places like New York City and Chicago.

And while highway construction and road improvement projects are an important facet in the debate over transportation in Las Vegas, Martini said perhaps more fundamental changes are needed.

 “One thing that every transportation agency deals with is growth versus transportation,” Martini said. “It’s a balance. There’s a phrase out there that says you can never build your way out of congestion. The real answer will never be to build more roads and widen freeways. There’s many pieces of the puzzle: more utilization of public transit, alternate modes of transportation, and designing cities, new neighborhoods, new developments so it doesn’t require transportation to get around.            

 “You’re starting to see the work-live neighborhoods, where you can walk to the grocery store rather than drive several miles. What has happened in Las Vegas because of the growth is that transportation—and the time it takes to plan it, design it, go through the environmental process and mostly to fund it—can’t keep pace with the need because of the growth there has been. Sometimes putting in a new road will attract developers to the site. It is kind of a never-ending cycle. The more you build, the more induced growth you get. Unless there are other methods used, you’ll always see congestion.”

By Caitlin McGarry