Strip intersection became traffic nightmare after shooting

What happens when the valley’s busiest intersection suddenly becomes a massive crime scene?

That is what traffic engineers were faced with Thursday morning, when the shooting and fiery crash that left three people dead also sealed Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard behind police tape for almost 15 hours.

Brian Hoeft is director of the Regional Transportation Commission’s Freeway and Arterial System of Transportation, better known as FAST.

He said some 150,000 vehicles a day pass through the intersection of Flamingo and the Strip, roughly 15,000 more than the valley’s next busiest corner, the Strip at Tropicana Avenue.

Once the intersection shut down, “we got to try to handle all the trickle-down from that,” Hoeft said.

Even with a vast network of traffic sensors, cameras and computer-controlled traffic lights, there were limits to what they could do.

“We did our best to adjust signal timing where we could,” he said, but the volume of traffic diverted from the intersection was just too much for the surrounding streets to handle.

Koval Lane at Flamingo and Harmon Avenue bore the brunt of it. Hoeft said those intersections saw four times their normal traffic volume on Thursday. In a case like that, “our hands are tied,” he said.

The only thing traffic engineers could do is get the word out on the closure and let motorists find their own way around area.

Hoeft said the news was quickly posted on freeway signs along Interstate 15 from St. Rose Parkway to the Spaghetti Bowl.

“The most important thing we could do is get information out there. After that, it was up to the traveler to make decisions,” he said.

Traffic personnel also had to respond quickly Thursday morning to reroute buses that normally ferry visitors along the Strip.

“Normally you would have a bus going up and down Las Vegas Boulevard every five to seven minutes,” Hoeft said. “Obviously that couldn’t happen either.”

The closure of the intersection meant shutting down the pedestrian bridges there for most of the day, forcing tourists to find creative routes around the blockage. Police officers at the scene were asked repeatedly how to reach the resorts north and south of the closure.

Hoeft couldn’t remember a longer closure of a major intersection on the Strip — except for those planned for marathons, New Year’s Eve celebrations and other special events.

He thinks FAST and the valley’s transportation network as a whole operated as designed on Thursday, but officials plan to review what happened to see whether there is any room for improvement.

Everything is a learning opportunity, he said.

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.