Click image for enlargement. Graphic by Mike Johnson.

Bill Sudduth has lived near state Route 160 and Hualapai Way on the fringes of the Las Vegas Valley for two decades. He's seen Route 160, also known as Blue Diamond Road, go from empty to busy to deadly.

A development boom in the far southwest valley and in Pahrump has turned the once-sleepy byway into a jampacked commuter route. And as traffic has filled the road, bad wrecks have become more commonplace.

In the past six months, at least 11 people have died in crashes on a roughly 50-mile stretch of Route 160, from Interstate 15 to Pahrump, and scores of others have been hurt in collisions or rollovers.

The latest serious crash happened Friday about 1:44 a.m. A 29-year-old woman was critically injured when her sport utility vehicle ran a stop sign on Durango Drive and was broadsided by a truck on Route 160, where traffic has the right of way, authorities said. The crash was nearly a repeat of a wreck three days earlier.

On Tuesday around 10 a.m. at Route 160 and Durango, 24-year-old Ofelia Gonzalez-Castillo was killed when she apparently failed to yield at a stop sign on Durango and her SUV was rammed by a double-trailer truck hauling sand down Route 160, police said.

The Durango-Route 160 crossing is one that Sudduth, 65, has specifically complained about to authorities while also airing general concerns about the highway. He said responses have been polite but noncommittal.

"There has been just a tremendous increase in traffic danger" on Route 160, Sudduth said. "We feel like we take our life in our hands whenever we go on the highway anymore. It's ridiculous."

In recent years, traffic volume has as much as tripled on some stretches of the mostly two-lane highway that once saw sparse rural traffic.

"The more cars, the more potential for bad stuff to happen," said Trooper Kevin Honea of the Nevada Highway Patrol. "There's so many more people living out there now. There's a lot more people commuting from Pahrump to Las Vegas to work. We're seeing an incredible increase in traffic there."

The string of tragedies on what is the only road for many southwestern valley residents to reach I-15 and jobs in the central valley also puts a spotlight on infrastructure improvements that often fail to keep pace with development and localized population booms.

"It's a Catch-22 thing," said Bobby Shelton, a spokesman for Clark County's public works department. "Yeah, it's a case where growth has gotten in place before infrastructure.

"It's been a constant problem for the past 15 or 20 years. Green Valley went through the same thing," Shelton said. "It takes time to get money and build infrastructure. It's always been an issue."

DEATH TOLL MOUNTS

In the meantime, Route 160's death toll has swelled since the start of July, primarily at three crash-prone clusters on the route: between I-15 and Rainbow Drive; around the state Route 159 junction near Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area; and near Pahrump in Nye County.

According to police reports:

• A 60-year-old man died when he lost control of his car near the Clark-Nye line about 5 p.m. Dec. 16.

• A 50-year-old man was killed when his car was struck head-on by a car that crossed into his lane near Route 159 about 2 p.m. Dec. 13.

• Roger Erickson, 55, died when a minivan crossed into his lane and struck his car near Hualapai just after midnight Nov. 7.

• A 35-year-old Pahrump man died Oct. 2 when his car rolled over near Route 159.

• Two people were killed Oct. 1 when they tried to pass a car before striking a pickup truck parked along the road near Red Rock.

• Shirley Robinson, 64, of Las Vegas was struck by a truck and killed Aug. 17 while walking along Route 160 about 26 miles south of Pahrump.

• Montgomery Kelly, 44, of Pahrump died in a midday rollover Aug. 13 on Route 160 near Pahrump.

• Two people died when their car rolled over on Route 160 at the Clark-Nye line about 6 a.m. July 16.

A Nevada Department of Transportation study found that the intersection of Route 160 and Industrial Road (now known as Dean Martin Drive) just west of I-15 was the 10th most crash-prone intersection in the Las Vegas Valley between Nov. 1, 1999, and Oct. 31, 2002, with more than three wrecks for every 100 million miles traveled by all vehicles through that area.

And the Highway Patrol beat covering Route 160 from the Route 159 junction to Pahrump was the deadliest in Southern Nevada last year, with 12 traffic fatalities.

The next deadliest were I-15 near Jean and the Las Vegas Beltway from Buffalo Drive to Far Hills Drive, shorter but much busier highway stretches, with seven deaths each in 2004.

So far this year, the Route 160 beat west of Route 159 has had 14 deaths.

"That will be our most hazardous beat again," Honea said.

That's drawn the attention of road planners.

"The safety of motorists is our number one concern," said Bob McKenzie, a spokesman for the state transportation department. "Our engineers constantly look at roads and volumes to make sure we have the safest roads possible."

But, he said, the main factor in the death toll on Route 160 appears to be driver behavior.

Police agree.

"It's never the roadway's fault," said Honea. "It seems like ... most of the accidents out there are failure to stay in a travel lane. Somebody's distracted or driving too fast for conditions."

BUSIER AND DEADLIER

But a lot more cars are using a road not necessarily designed for a lot of cars. Route 160 largely lacks passing or turning lanes or adequate shoulders.

Route 160 just west of Industrial Road carried fewer than 10,000 cars and trucks a day in 1995. By 2004, more than 26,000 vehicles a day were using the road, according to state statistics.

Similar explosive growth from 1995 to 2004 has been seen on other stretches of Route 160, including sections just west of Decatur Boulevard (10,500 in 1994 to 20,600 in 2004), just west of Rainbow (6,175 to 12,000) and just west of state Route 159 near Red Rock (4,850 to 8,050).

Meanwhile, traffic from Pahrump has grown. At the Clark-Nye county line, Route 160 carried around 4,000 cars a day in 1995 but almost 9,000 in 2004. And in that time, Route 160 just south of Pahrump went from around 14,000 cars a day to about 19,000.

Once-quiet roads crossing Route 160 have become similarly jammed. In 1998, Decatur carried 400 cars a day just south of Route 160. By 2004, that had mushroomed to 9,650.

A good share of that traffic growth is fueled by the construction of communities such as Mountain's Edge, a 3,000-acre community near Route 160 and Buffalo, which expects to have 30,000 residents and 12,000 homes by 2012.

"We're seeing more population in that area. With the growth in Pahrump and Mountain's Edge, you're seeing more and more vehicles on the highway," said McKenzie, adding that his agency is "very concerned" with the pace of growth there.

On top of that, Honea said, Route 160 is hardly forgiving to driver mistakes.

"With any one-lane (in each direction) road, you don't have the big, wide shoulders. There's very little margin for error," Honea said. "With the lack of a big emergency lane or anything like that, any mistake you make is just compounded."

Drivers in the southwest have few options other than Route 160 to access I-15, the valley's major north-south route and the most direct route to the resort corridor, where most of the jobs are.

The Las Vegas Beltway, also known as Clark County Highway 215 or Interstate 215, runs parallel to and north of Route 160, but it is largely inaccessible from Mountain's Edge and nearby areas.

"There's only one way to get to the 215 from that area. That's Rainbow (Boulevard)," Shelton said.

McKenzie agreed. "There are very few alternate roads people can take," he said. "That's something that needs to be addressed."

Sudduth believes congestion and lack of options cause some drivers to take risks.

"Certain times of the day, it'll take you 30 to 40 minutes, with no accidents, to get from I-15 to the (Route) 159 turnoff," a distance of about 11 miles, he said.

Wrecks, meanwhile, are "a mixture of the big increase in the big (construction) trucks and people in a hurry, who pass over double lines on blind curves, or people trying to cross the highway," Sudduth said. "A lot of it is driver error. But whether it's been error or not, that's what they've had to live with."

A FIX, BUT WHEN?

When asked if Route 160 was a safe road, McKenzie said: "I'd consider it a state highway. It's safe.

"We ask people to drive sensibly and to pay attention and drive defensively. We realize there is growth. We're trying to cope with that question the best we can."

To that end, engineers are working on upgrading parts of the route. That includes widening the route to eight lanes from I-15 to Rainbow over the next few years.

Although insisting that Route 160 is safe in terms of design, McKenzie said it will be safer after the widening.

And the county plans to extend or upgrade a quartet of roads -- Fort Apache Road, Jones Boulevard, Durango and Decatur -- to provide links from Route 160 to the Beltway, allowing drivers greater flexibility in choosing commuter routes.

The problem with those plans is that they're too little, too late for those stuck in gridlock today.

"The road at this point is overloaded. It's going to get tremendously worse," Sudduth said. "By the time they get around to it, it's absolutely going to be ridiculous.

"It would make some difference, but when are they going to do it?"

The county road upgrades aren't scheduled to begin before 2007. Some probably won't be finished until 2020.

Scrounging up funding and popular support for road projects is a tough sell when a need isn't obvious, and other existing traffic needs have the full attention of the public.

Even in the best of cases, it often takes years to get funding, draw up plans and pour concrete.

"The problem is, had you built Durango and Jones and Buffalo down to Blue Diamond 10 or 15 years ago, people would have thought you were nuts. People don't foresee the need for those facilities," Shelton said. "Where does the money come from, prior to the need?"

The state has billions of dollars' worth of projects planned over the next 20 years, and officials believe they are billions short of funding all projects they deem as necessary just to maintain current levels of mobility here.

"With the available funds, we're trying to do these improvements as quickly as we can," McKenzie said.

On Route 160, some interim fixes have been put in place. Engineers recently installed a temporary stoplight at Route 160 and Decatur after a spate of wrecks there.

And some road improvements have been made to the highway near Pahrump and Mountain Springs, just west of the Route 159 junction.

Although engineers are looking at further upgrades on Route 160 outside the valley toward Pahrump, no other improvements are set for anytime soon.

"These areas will be addressed," McKenzie said, without offering a timeline. "But there are other issues we have in the valley."

In the interim, that largely leaves Route 160 drivers to fend for themselves.

Sudduth fears that priorities are being misplaced.

"It's all about the money," he said. "It's not about the people."