Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

ROAD WARRIOR Q&A: Special Dispensation

Higher authority gives church the OK to close lane

Cones close a lane of Vegas Drive Sunday morning near the entrance to the Shadow Hills Baptist Church. City officials granted the church a permit to close the lane each Sunday to facilitate moving traffic in the area. Photo by Craig L. Moran.

This weeks readers want to know why a church near Summerlin closes a lane of Vegas Drive on Sunday mornings, what became of the wasting-fuel ticket, and whether DMV fees are based a vehicle's purchased price or suggested retail price.

• A reader asks: Every Sunday on Vegas Drive west of Buffalo Road, the Shadow Hills Baptist Church puts out a sign that says "Special Event," closing one lane of Vegas Drive. It's not a special event, it's just church services that happen every week. Why are they allowed to close a lane?

With permission from a higher authority, in this case the Las Vegas Public Works Department's Traffic Division, the Shadow Hills Baptist Church may close a lane on Vegas Drive each Sunday morning.

City officials said such requests are handled on a case-by-case basis after assessing the impact on traffic and residents in the area.

After studying the situation and discovering most Sundays aren't busy traffic days, officials granted the church permission for its weekly lane closure to expedite moving worshippers in and out of the neighborhood.

"It was a unique situation because it's a big church with only one way in and out," said Public Works spokeswoman Debby Ackerman. "We didn't necessarily want the traffic going through residential streets in the area. It seemed to be a workable solution for the church and the residents of the area."

• Steve Frehner asks: Do they still have the wasting-energy ticket that was in place when the speed limit was set at 55 mph? Or when they raised the speed limit up to 75 mph, did they do away with it?

The unnecessary waste of resources currently in short supply law, as it was awkwardly termed, was put on the books in 1987.

With it, Nevada placated a federal government threatening to withhold millions of dollars in highway money for failing to enforce what the Silver State considered to be an unrealistic and arbitrary 55 mph speed limit. The state could correctly claim it was enforcing the law by handing out $15 citations. The public knew it was a mere slap on the wrist because the tickets weren't for moving violations, sparing motorists black marks on their driving records and higher insurance fees.

"It was a brilliant compromise," said Mike Lawson, the Transportation Department's traffic information division chief.

One that became obsolete when the 55 mph limit ended.

The Legislature repealed the wasting-energy law in 1995. Two years later, however, they passed a similar law. This time, it was to placate motorists in rural Nevada who believed the state's 60 mph, 65 mph and 75 mph speed limits were just as unrealistic and arbitrary as the federal government's.

The law, which applies only to counties with populations under 100,000, calls for fines of $25 for traveling no more than 10 mph over the speed limit in areas where the posted speed limit is either 60 mph or 65 mph, or no more than 5 mph over the speed limit where the posted speed limit is 75 mph.

• Robert Ward asks: Recently I purchased a new vehicle and proceeded to the DMV to register it and purchase license plates. The clerk doing the paper work told me that the assessment would be $36,000, which I thought sounded reasonable since I had paid $35,000 for the truck. Next she ask me if I had the price sticker because she needed it for the gross vehicle weight. I let her have it, she then saw the sticker price was $42,000 and she changed the assessment from $36,000 to the $42,000. I didn't need the sticker with the list price to purchase the plates. Should buyers be warned not to take the sticker from the vehicle to the Department of Motor Vehicles?

The Department of Motor Vehicles bases its registration fees on the manufacturer's suggested retail price as reported to the U.S. Department of Transportation, said DMV spokesman Kevin Malone.

Bringing the sticker into the DMV office didn't cause Ward to pay higher fees, Malone said. Had the DMV clerk not gotten the price from the window sticker, she would have been able to access it from a department database or other reference material, he said.

Based on the identification number for Ward's 2003 Expedition, the agency's Web site shows the vehicle's suggested retail price as $42,200.

"It doesn't matter whether she looked at the sticker or not because that number ($42,200) would have come up in the computer," Malone said.

To check an estimate of DMV registration fees go to www.dmvnv.com.

• Finally, about a dozen of you wrote and called about an item that appeared in this column two weeks ago.

In it, county officials explained that they hired a contractor to change the light bulbs on the beltway because they lacked the equipment to reach the high mast lights, said Clark County Public Works spokesman Bobby Shelton. As many of you noted, crews don't need special equipment to reach the lights. They merely lower them using a built-in cable system.

So why then did the county contract out the job?

Shelton said the department did lack the proper equipment, specifically attenuator trucks to protect crews working beside the freeway. He said the department also doesn't have the manpower to do the job.

If you have a question for the Road Warror, call 387-2906 or e-mail MSquires@reviewjournal.com. Please include your phone number.