EDITORIAL: Great interstate

Interstate 11, for years nothing more than a dream on a drawing board, became very real Monday when Nevada officials broke ground on a stretch of freeway that will provide a faster, direct link between the Las Vegas and Phoenix metropolitan areas.

The accompanying celebration was too reserved. Every road construction project in fast-growing, congestion-plagued Southern Nevada is important. But none has as much potential to expand Nevada’s economy and boost trade throughout the Intermountain West as I-11.

A bigger party will be in order once much of the highway is done.

The groundbreaking ceremony near the Hoover Dam Lodge, attended by Gov. Brian Sandoval, Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison, U.S. Sens. Harry Reid and Dean Heller, and Reps. Joe Heck and Cresent Hardy, among others, marked the start of work on the $318 million Boulder City bypass. The 15-mile stretch of divided four-lane highway will speed traffic from the O’Callaghan-Tillman Memorial Bridge, high above the Colorado River, to U.S. Highway 95 near the Railroad Pass Casino and allow drivers to avoid bottlenecks along Boulder City’s main drag. Those delays can add a half-hour or more to Nevada-Arizona trips and are especially burdensome for commercial trucks.

As reported Tuesday by the Review-Journal’s Richard N. Velotta, the Boulder City bypass will be the first new piece of the 47,856-mile Interstate Highway System since 1992, when the system was deemed completed. And it won’t be the last.

For now, the I-11 corridor stretches only from Las Vegas to Phoenix — the largest adjacent major American cities without a direct highway connection — thanks to a designation approved by Congress in 2012. But the highway eventually will stretch south to the Mexican border and north through Nevada and the northwest United States to the Canadian border, creating a new international trade corridor to relieve pressure on California freeways and ports.

Last month, legislation was introduced by Reps. Hardy and Dina Titus of Nevada and Reps. Paul Gosar and Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona to extend the I-11 corridor north and south. A companion bill was introduced in the Senate. Passage of this legislation should be a high priority for the Nevada and Arizona delegations.

The Boulder City bypass is expected to be finished by early 2018. By then, with additional improvements to existing roads in Arizona, the once-dreadful Las Vegas-to-Phoenix drive will take a little more than four hours. I-11 also holds the promise of one day shortening the travel time between Las Vegas and Reno, but that could take decades.

Gregory Nadeau, acting administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, attended Monday’s groundbreaking as well, using the event to tout the importance of the shrinking Highway Trust Fund. But construction of the Boulder City bypass would have started much sooner if not for the inefficient management of federal fuel tax dollars, which flow to Washington and are spent on mass transit and other nonhighway projects. There have been bipartisan calls for an increase in the 18.4-cents-per-gallon federal fuel tax. A better solution? Have Washington stop collecting the tax altogether and let each state keep 100 percent of the existing levy. States know their infrastructure needs far better than Washington.

I-11 would be finished much sooner if Nevada and Arizona didn’t have to rely on political clout to get their federal fuel tax dollars returned home. But the start of work on the Boulder City bypass is better late than never. It’s a road to a better future.