Building roads is building futures

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, April 12, 2015 | 2 a.m.

This past week, a couple hundred people descended on a vacant lot overlooking Lake Mead to witness something historic: a groundbreaking for the bypass of what will become Interstate 11, the last remaining significant section of the country’s interstate highway system that was started two generations ago by President Dwight Eisenhower.

At some point, hopefully sooner than later, the great and growing metropolitan areas of Phoenix and Las Vegas will be linked by a proper interstate highway, just like the rest of the country, rather than the two-lane nightmare that we traveled on when I was young and how today’s young still travel.

At the groundbreaking — the importance of which is acknowledged by the federal government with its material and essential contribution to the project — Nevada’s lieutenant governor, Mark Hutchison, recounted the days of his youth and the long car trips with his family to visit relatives in Arizona. Everyone in attendance who lived here in those early days, including me, had the same memories and understood the importance of finally making the road more traveled a much safer and saner experience.

It was a day of excitement, the messages were upbeat and positive, and the hopes for a future that would be better linked from Mexico through Phoenix, Las Vegas, Reno and up into Canada was not just envisioned but, with the groundbreaking, moving toward reality. Billions of dollars of commerce, tens of thousands of new jobs and millions more tourists coming to Las Vegas were the pictures dancing in our heads.

Later this past week, I celebrated with another group of forward-thinking Nevadans at Fleming’s restaurant at Town Square. It was a small but significant group of donors and supporters of what will soon be the new UNLV Medical School. We were there to get a progress report — which is good — but also to acknowledge an incredible expression of support for a community that is determined to provide the first class of UNLV medical students what is commonly called a “free ride” for all four years of medical school.

Imagine some of the best and brightest students in the country will be able to attend UNLV’s medical school and be able to start their medical careers without the crushing debt that usually follows young doctors out the door and into their practices.

As I listened to UNLV President Len Jessup and Medical School Dean Barbara Atkinson talk about what was coming — the students, the school, the billions of dollars of direct economic benefit to Southern Nevada and the thousands of new jobs that will result, along with the essential raising of the quality and quantity of health care available in tomorrow’s Las Vegas — my mind jumped back to that groundbreaking in Boulder City just a few days earlier.

Amid all the congratulations, well-deserved to be sure, was a warning from Nevada’s senior U.S. senator, Harry Reid. He told those assembled that the ill-advised termination of congressional earmarks (where a single congressman or senator can have some economic impact for his or her constituents) has come at the same time that this country has a $3 trillion deficit in its infrastructure needs. And the only reason the I-11 groundbreaking was taking place was an earmark he obtained 12 years earlier.

It was a sobering thought because I can see a future with crumbling bridges, broken highways and abandoned tunnels because they are unsafe, and there’s no ability to fix them — all in the name of some political panacea cooked up by politicians and pandered to the voters.

I also saw UNLV’s Medical School, with all of its community support from forward-thinking politicians in its corner, being thwarted because at the end of the road between Las Vegas and Carson City stood small-minded politicians determined to make sure it did not happen.

Roads, especially those connecting today’s generation to tomorrow’s hopes and dreams, go both ways. Brilliant leaders like Eisenhower knew why they needed to be built. Two generations later, our country has prospered more than any other as a result of what he did.

Up the road in Carson City, there are politicians — some from Southern Nevada — who for whatever small and petty reasons are working to scuttle a bright, prosperous and medically advanced future for all of Southern Nevada. It’s a future supported by Gov. Brian Sandoval and the overwhelming majority of Nevada’s voters.

Reid’s warning is prescient, but it has come at a time when it is significantly harder to correct the damage already done.

My concern, my fear, is being expressed before the damage is done and in plenty of time for our legislators in Carson City to act appropriately.

This is the time to act and act boldly. Let’s make sure we not only build the freeway that is essential for our future but build that medical school that will make our lives better, our region more secure and our future much healthier.

This is a democracy. If you want to build a better tomorrow for your grandkids and a better and healthier today for yourselves, make your voice be heard.

And do it now. Just like I have done.

Brian Greenspun is owner, publisher and editor of the Las Vegas Sun.