The Nevada DOT and the city of Las Vegas recently celebrated the substantial completion of the $1 billion, three-year Project Neon, the largest and most expensive public works project in the state's 155-year history.
Project Neon enhanced nearly 4 miles of I-15 between Sahara Avenue and the “Spaghetti Bowl” interchange in downtown Las Vegas. It is currently the busiest stretch of highway in Nevada with 300,000 vehicles daily, or one-tenth of the state population, seeing 25,000 lane changes per hour. The improvements are timely with traffic through the corridor expected to double during the next two decades.
“Project Neon reduces travel delays and creates better mobility in downtown Las Vegas,” Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said in a news release. “It also improves motorist safety from reduced merge and weave traffic.”
Project Neon entailed 63 lane miles of new concrete and asphalt paving, with 29 bridges and 10 miles of drainage improvements. In addition to a newly expanded 20-mile-plus High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) network, added north-south surface street connections reduce congestion and provide better access into downtown Las Vegas and Symphony Park as well as the Medical and Arts districts. Western Avenue, for example, now extends to Charleston Boulevard where it previously hit a dead-end. Also, a new bridge carries Industrial Road over the Union Pacific railroad tracks between Wyoming Avenue and Charleston Boulevard.
Other upgrades include a new freeway on-ramp at Pinto Lane onto I-15 southbound, plus an entirely reconfigured full diamond interchange at Charleston Boulevard with a new I-15 northbound off-ramp that now enables westbound travel and direct entry to Grand Central Parkway and Alta Drive/Bonneville Avenue.
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SOURCE: Nevada DOT
