Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

5-MINUTE EXPERT:

Project Neon: What we can expect during and after the work on Las Vegas’ Spaghetti Bowl

Incentives

As part of the contract, Kiewit has 1,350 days to complete its work. If all goes as planned, the work would be finished in July 2019.

• $20 million: Incentive for finishing phases early and finishing the entire project early

Deductions will be taken for failure to meet deadlines on lane closures. Numerous closures will be necessary during construction. When each is scheduled, officials will set a deadline for reopening lanes.

• $13,300: Fine for every 10 minutes the lane is closed after the deadline

• $2,300: Deduction for every 10 minutes a street is closed past deadline

• $73,000: Deduction for every day the project is overdue

In a community presentation last spring on Project Neon, the colossal highway project getting underway in and around the Spaghetti Bowl, a Nevada Department of Transportation official offered a joke about what lay in store.

“We’re going to increase safety, increase capacity and really make your life miserable for about three or four years,” said Tracy Larkin-Thomason, NDOT’s Southern Nevada deputy director.

The joke drew chuckles, but Las Vegas commuters almost certainly won’t be laughing when work begins this year.

Why not? Because Project Neon is going to generate a forest of orange markers and detour signs at the city’s busiest highway junction through at least summer 2019. It’s the biggest road project in Nevada history — a nearly $1 billion overhaul that includes widening and repaving 3.7 miles of Interstate-15, building bridges, rebuilding the Charleston Boulevard interchange and changing the layouts of surface streets.

So get ready for some epic traffic back-ups, Las Vegas commuters. Meanwhile, take a tour of what we’ll get for all of our headaches.

What’s happening and when

In November, NDOT awarded a $559.4 million contract to Arizona-based Kiewit Infrastructure West Co. to design and build the project. Beginning last year, work began on acquisition, demolition of structures, trenching for utilities, and drilling to test geological stability.

• Elevated through-lanes for high-occupancy vehicles will be placed in the middle of I-15, and those lanes will be connected to U.S. 95 with a new flyover bridge.

• The area near the I-15/U.S. 95 junction will be reworked using a similar approach as was taken at the Spring Mountain Road junction of I-15. It’s called ramp braiding, which involves exits being routed over and under each other to allow traffic to leave the road more fluidly.

• An HOV interchange — a first for Las Vegas — will allow traffic to flow to and from a point near Wall Street, between Charleston and Oakey boulevards. The interchange will link with the “Neon Gateway,” a new set of connections on the east side of I-15.

• A new downtown-to-Strip corridor will be created by connecting Grand Central Parkway to Western Avenue and Industrial Road, and building a bridge over the Union Pacific railroad tracks.

• The Charleston interchange will be redone, becoming a more standard diamond-like configuration as opposed to its current set-up, which involves a double exit for traffic northbound on I-15.

• The project includes new soundwalls along the highways and decorative panels on underpasses, plus landscaping along surface streets. Those streets also will include bike lanes.

Why it’s needed

The current configuration was built to handle 180,000 vehicles a day. It now draws 270,000. NDOT officials say that without Project Neon, there would be 1,000 accidents a year — an average of three per day ­— in the corridor by 2030.

Find out more

NDOT will use social media and a website to provide project updates and detour/tie-up alerts. In addition, the department will use the Regional Transportation Commission’s text alert system to provide notification about detours and traffic problems. An outreach center will be established near the Charleston interchange.

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