Project Neon downtime required from Black Friday to NASCAR races
When crews start construction work on Project Neon early next year, workers will be required to have every lane of the Spaghetti Bowl open to traffic from Black Friday through the March NASCAR races.
That was one of the requirements of a contract the Nevada Department of Transportation imposed for the $1.5 billion project that will upgrade the state's busiest freeway interchange over three years.
Project Neon manager Cole Mortensen told members of the Las Vegas Appraisal Institute Thursday that the apparent successful bidder has arranged a 300-day construction schedule for the Interstate 15 portion of the project, which will overhaul its intersection with U.S. Highway 95 and improve it south to Sahara Avenue.
About 90 people attended the institute's Las Vegas Market Symposium at the Suncoast.
The state Transportation Board will consider awarding the contract to a partnership of Kiewit Infrastructure West and the multinational design and engineering firm Atkins on Monday.
The design-build project, a construction option that enables the designer and construction contractor to work simultaneously as the project progresses, will likely begin by March.
When it does, Spaghetti Bowl lanes will be reduced at times as workers deliver a series of improvements designed to ease congestion at an intersection that carries 270,000 vehicles a day.
The largest element of the project will be a high-occupancy-vehicle flyover bridge connecting U.S. 95 with I-15.
There also will be a freeway interchange exclusively for high-occupancy vehicles south of Charleston Boulevard. The Charleston interchange will be revamped and a series of ramp-braiding overpasses and underpasses will be designed to minimize conflicts between traffic merging from southbound U.S. 95 to southbound I-15 and traffic exiting I-15 at Charleston, a location where vehicle collisions occur almost daily.
Project Neon, a collaboration between the state and the city of Las Vegas, also will provide new access to downtown Las Vegas east of the freeway.
The Kiewit-Atkins $560 million contract is the next phase of the project after the state has spent years in right-of-way acquisition, litigation and demolition to make way for construction.
"The top priority for the planning of this project has been to minimize congestion and to keep traffic flowing as best as possible," Mortensen said.
The decision to restore all lanes of traffic between Black Friday — the traditional start of holiday gift shopping — and the Kobalt 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race in March is an effort to ease traffic during a traditionally busy retail period as well as during one of the top traffic generators at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The largest portions of Project Neon are expected to be completed by the end of 2019.
Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Find him on Twitter: @RickVelotta
