In January, NDOT broke ground on a $78 million dollar widening and upgrade to a six-mile-long stretch of U.S. Highway 95 between Ann and Kyle Canyon roads in northwest Las Vegas. The project will relieve congestion, improve efficiency and enhance safety, while providing capacity for future growth. Currently, over 52,000 vehicles daily travel through the corridor; however, traffic is expected to more than double over the next two decades. The project calls for expanding the highway from four to six lanes from Durango Drive to Kyle Canyon Road, constructing carpool access ramps at Elkhorn Road and building a diverging diamond interchange at Kyle Canyon Road. Diverging Diamond Interchanges are a much more efficient movement of vehicles as opposed to ramps where you need to slow and then speed back up to make a freeway-to-freeway connection. Although still new to Nevada, they don’t require a lot of right-of-way acquisition, saving taxpayers money since they temporarily shift traffic to the left side of the road, thereby keeping motorists moving through two pairs of unimpeded left turns onto and off the freeway. The project additionally calls for wrong way driver alert signs that have been proven to reduce wrong-way events by 38 percent. There nearly 280 wrong-way driver crashes on Nevada freeways from 2005 to 2015, resulting in 41 fatalities and 125 injuries. Other enhancements entail placing decorative rock, erecting signage and lighting, and installing nearly nine miles of barrier rail. Additionally, the project will place concrete box storm drainage and open channel between the Centennial Bowl and Grand Teton Drive. Ultimately, the improvements will require moving enough dirt to fill 304 Olympic-sized swimming pools, placing enough concrete to pave 2,000 driveways, and using enough steel to build 100 Sherman tanks. Construction will finish in the fall of 2019.
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Tags: Highway 95, Las Vegas, NDOT, Nevada, Nevada DOT, NV
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