Gridlock taking road to recovery

Las Vegas' worst traffic headache is well on its way to being rectified.

Within the next six months, two of the most important ramps for the Spaghetti Bowl interchange will be complete, said Tom Patton, the project manager for Meadow Valley Contractors, which is building the new interchange.

The ramp linking the northbound lanes on Interstate 15 to the northbound lanes of U.S. 95 will be complete by March, he said. A second ramp linking the southbound lanes on U.S. 95 to southbound I-15 will be complete in April.

"Those are the two ramps where we are experiencing the largest traffic flow. The reason for that is so many people live in northwest Las Vegas and many of them work on the Strip."

The daily commute will soon be much different.

"Just think about it, when this is complete you'll be able to zip right through the Spaghetti Bowl at highway speeds. It is going to be terrific," said Scott Magruder, a spokesman for the Nevada Department of Transportation, or NDOT. "This is the largest construction contract in the state's history."

As most Las Vegans know, a rush-hour trip through the Spaghetti Bowl is an exercise in utter aggravation. Bumper-to-bumper traffic slowly edges its way through the interchange's tight curves.

"I'd say it's stop-and-go traffic for four or five hours every day," said Gene Weight, district engineer for the Nevada Department of Transportation. "People will see an improvement when the first two ramps are complete. But it will be a dramatic improvement once the whole interchange is complete."

In fact, six more ramps will be constructed as part of the project.

The $115 million project should be complete in October 2000, Patton said.

According to the transportation department, when the Spaghetti Bowl was constructed in 1969 it handled less than 30,000 vehicles a day. Now, on a typical day, more than 330,000 vehicles use it.

"You've got to remember the design work for that interchange was done in the late '50s and early '60s," said Gus Michaels, assistant district engineer for the NDOT. Las Vegas was a much different place back then. Right now, the interchange is handling about twice as many cars as its optimal capacity. If the engineer who designed that back in the '50s said it would be handling 330,000 cars someday -- they'd have told him that he was crazy."

Michaels said the interchange is without a doubt the most congested in the state.

"How bad is it? Well that depends on your point of view. If you are used to traffic in someplace like Carson City, it is just horrible. But if you are more accustomed to someplace like Los Angeles, you'll probably think it isn't that bad. ... Really when you think about it that design has held up very well over the years."

But Michaels said while the new Spaghetti Bowl is an improvement, it is far from a panacea for Las Vegas traffic woes.

"Once this is done, we are still going to have traffic backups because U.S. 95 just isn't wide enough to accommodate the traffic. To be honest with you, that road really should be 10 lanes wide to handle all of the traffic."

In fact, NDOT is considering a separate project, which would result in the widening of U.S. 95 between the Spaghetti Bowl and Rainbow Boulevard to 10 lanes.

But Weight said that project is still "several years" from taking place.

Kristine Bunnell, a senior transportation analyst for NDOT, said the road widening project could begin as early as three years from now and would take an additional three years to complete.

"Completing the Spaghetti Bowl is something that will have to be done before we can proceed with widening U.S. 95," she said.

About 90 percent of the funding for the highway portion of the interchange (excluding flood control) came from the federal government, Magruder said. The state paid the remaining 10 percent, he said.

"They have been talking about doing something to improve that interchange for more than a decade," he said. "Just on design and land acquisition we ended up spending $22.7 million."

The project is being constructed in a manner different from any other in the history of the state.

Some of the overpasses in the project are being constructed with pre-cast concrete segments. By using pre-cast pieces, which are being put in place with a special crane, existing traffic lanes will not have to be closed for extended periods like they would if conventional construction methods were employed, Patton said.

"Each slab is 12-feet long and weighs 60 tons," Patton said. "A Norwegian company custom-built the crane we are using on this project to put the pieces in place.

"This particular construction method is common overseas, but it is not used a lot in the United States. It is more expensive."

By using the crane and pre-cast segments, Meadow Valley can avoid erecting an elaborate system of scaffoldings that would force long-term closures of existing ramps.

"With this system, we can have minimal ramp closures. We will only close ramps at night from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. on nights when we are bringing segments over the ramp," Patton said.

Patton said his firm is not particularly fond of the name "Spaghetti Bowl."

"The reason it is called the 'Spaghetti Bowl' is because from the air it looks like somebody just dumped a bunch of noodles on the ground," Magruder said.

But Patton said he avoids the term.

"I just call it the Interstate 15/U.S. 95 interchange. I just think that sounds better."

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