EDITORIAL: The Nevada Department of Transportation wastes money by building HOV lanes

The Nevada Department of Transportation estimates it will cost about $450 million to do necessary work or upgrades on existing state roadways in need of repair. Many of the dilapidated roads or highways are in rural areas of the state, but the agency has identified four bridges and about three dozen street sections in Clark County that could use improvement.

Yet NDOT officials say budget shortfalls may delay much of the work.

In fact, it’s all a matter of priorities. Tony Illia, spokesman for the transportation department, told the Review-Journal recently that a large chunk of the state’s construction budget has been diverted to more pressing needs at the expense of routine street maintenance.

“NDOT believed the best location to spend our funds is at our busiest interchange in the state — the Las Vegas Spaghetti Bowl and areas south,” he said.

There’s no question that easing congestion at the junction of U.S. Highway 95 and Interstate 15 will make life easier for many local commuters. But what Mr. Illia didn’t say is that NDOT has also decided to spend millions of dollars building highway lanes that are off-limits to most motorists.

Improvements to the Spaghetti Bowl include the construction of “high occupancy vehicle” flyovers, while upgrades to Interstate 15 south of the downtown interchange call for converting express lanes into HOV lanes. Only motorcycles and vehicles carrying more than one occupant are allowed to access the HOV lanes during peak traffic times.

Meanwhile, the agency just spent $3 million and two months to extend an HOV lane on westbound Summerlin Parkway. That comes on the heels of a $27 million project in 2011 to create HOV flyovers at the intersection of Summerlin Parkway and U.S. 95.

To make matters worse, NDOT eventually plans to impose HOV restrictions 24 hours a day, meaning solo drivers won’t ever be legally allowed to use the lanes — even when the freeway is virtually vacant at 3 a.m.

In an email to the Review-Journal last June, Mr. Illia noted that, “HOV lanes are a congestion management strategy that reduce travel time with higher speeds and less delay by limiting the volume of traffic.” Well, yes. Of course there will be less congestion in lanes with limited access. But this “congestion management strategy” does little other than exacerbate the frustration for the great majority of tax-paying drivers relegated to the traditional lanes.

To say that HOV lanes are lightly traveled is to state the obvious. Mr. Illia reports that a 2010 survey found carpools account for just 11.6 percent of all work trips in the Las Vegas area. Perhaps if the Nevada Department of Transportation stopped siphoning off a large portion of its budget to create traffic lanes that most drivers are prohibited from using, the agency would have plenty of money to make needed improvements to roads on which people are actually allowed to drive.