Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Hundreds of millions needed to fix decaying Nevada roads, official says

Highway 168 Finding Nevada

Matt Hufman

This is a view of Highway 168 on Sept. 15, 2013. The highway runs from Interstate 15 in the Moapa Valley to U.S. 93 at Coyote Springs.

An estimated $661 million is needed to fix Nevada’s decaying road system, much of it in rural Nevada.

The state Transportation Board was told Monday that 95 percent of Nevada’s highways were in fair to very good shape. But the remaining roadways are in a mediocre to very poor condition.

Reid Kaiser, assistant director of operations in the Transportation Department, said that $241.5 million has been spent in the past fiscal two years for rehabilitation and repair work on 392 miles of state’s highways.

He told the board a previous study estimated the backlog of fixing the poor roads was $2 billion. But that was based on the age of the highways. The new lower figure of $661 million comes from actual inspections of road conditions.

Most of the problematic highways are in rural Nevada, due in part to the rebirth of the mining industry, Kaiser said. The highways were not built to withstand the heavy trucks used by mining companies.

The goal of the department is to keep 95 percent of the highways in fair to good condition. And there is a five-year plan to reduce problems such as potholes and ruts on roads in poor condition.

He told the board that $119 million is needed to preserve the bridges in Nevada. He emphasized none is in danger of collapse as in other states. But the money is needed to correct problems.

Nevada, he said, has the third fewest structurally deficient or obsolete bridges in the nation. There are 1,952 bridges in Nevada, with the state responsible for 1,154.

Before Kaiser’s presentation, Christopher Cooper of the Nevada Highway User Preservation Association told the board the “roads are rapidly deteriorating” and the state is not spending enough to preserve them.

Cooper said that 50 percent of the highways are in less-than-fair condition and that something has to be done to increase the gasoline tax that funds most of the improvement.

The federal government funds a large part of the highway building money. Rudy Malfabon, director of the Transportation Department, said Congress has passed a temporary bill to keep federal money flowing to the states.

Malfabon said the federal funding is unable to keep up with the requirements of the state. “There is a gap in revenue,” he said.

The federal and state gas taxes are not keeping pace as more efficient fuel cars are being manufactured, he said.

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