A bicyclist rides east on Alta Drive Monday along a marked bike trail. City officials have designated Alta as the main thoroughfare for a Downtown to Red Rock bike trail. Photos by Clint Karlsen. Click image for enlargement. Graphic by Mike Johnson. A sign on Alta Drive near Vista Run Drive denotes the Downtown to Red Rock bike trail.

Chris Roberts loves bicycling around the Las Vegas Valley. But the trip along congested West Charleston Boulevard has always made her uneasy.

"You have to be more cautious. We're more vulnerable" on Charleston, Roberts, a member of the Las Vegas Valley Bicycle Club, said Monday.

As of this week, she'll have a safer option with the opening of the Downtown to Red Rock bike trail, a nearly 20-mile route mostly along Alta Drive from the central valley to the Red Rock National Conservation Area.

The city of Las Vegas-built bikeway replaces about five miles of bike lanes formerly on Charleston between Tenaya Way and the Las Vegas Beltway, which were converted to extra traffic lanes in that busy retail and residential corridor.

Planners wanted to give drivers more room on Charleston and bicyclists less competition with cars.

"That was the principal motivation," said Jerry Duke, assistant planning manager for the Regional Transportation Commission.

Despite conflicts with traffic, Charleston had been favored by bicyclists because it leads directly to Red Rock, west of the city. The new route substitutes large stretches of Charleston with Alta, which is parallel to and a half-mile north of Charleston.

The path goes along an approximately 13-mile stretch of Alta from Main Street west to Desert Foothills Drive, just west of the Beltway and the most congested stretches of Charleston. From there, the path goes about one mile south on Desert Foothills to Charleston, then back west on a four-mile rural stretch of Charleston to Red Rock.

"It's going to be heaven. We don't have to worry about traffic coming in and out of the businesses," Roberts said. "There's less traffic. It's beautiful. The scenery is gorgeous."

The new bikeway's concept had long been endorsed by regional planners and bicyclists, but didn't receive $637,000 in Transportation Commission funding until last year.

"This has been a conversation that's been going on for a long time," said Las Vegas City Councilman Lawrence Weekly.

Generally, planners try to avoid putting bike lanes on busy commercial streets with speed limits of 45 mph, like Charleston, preferring mostly residential streets with speed limits of 35 mph or less like Alta.

Money for the new route came from a $50 million fund earmarked for on-street bicycle programs from Question 10 sales tax revenues. That tax measure, designed to pay for transportation-related programs, was approved by voters in 2002.

Much of that money will go into adding new bike lanes in the valley in the coming years. Currently, there are about 185 miles of on-street bike paths; planners expect to add 111 more miles.