A new project aims to improve how to get to, through and around Downtown Las Vegas, but it could come with a large price tag and possible permanent road closures.

That's this week on Nevada Week.

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(Kipp Ortenburger) Anyone who has driven along the I-515 corridor, otherwise known as US 95, through Downtown Las Vegas knows just how treacherous it can be.

The road is not only busy and getting busier as more people move here, but it is also uneven to the point that it feels more like a roller coaster sometimes than an important connection in an urban core.

Now the Nevada Department of Transportation is trying to change that.

It's in the beginning stages of reworking the entire area with the goal of not only fixing the roadway but also improving access to Downtown and the Historic Westside.

On Nevada Week we'll look at why the project is so important for the growth of the city as a whole and Downtown in particular, how the different agencies involved in the project will work together and how it fits into the larger infrastructure challenges that Southern Nevada is facing.

Joining us now to talk about this project is David Swallow, deputy chief executive officer of the Regional Transportation Commission; Kristina Swallow, director of the Nevada Department of Transportation, and Joey Paskey, city traffic engineer with the City of Las Vegas.

Well, thank you so much to our viewership for being here for this episode of Nevada Week, and I want to thank the panel for being in-studio, very reflective of what's happening right now throughout Southern Nevada.

A lot of people are coming back to work in person, and of course our roadways, our freeways and our highways are a lot more crowded, a perfect time to talk about transportation infrastructure, I think.

Kristina, I want to start with you.

The Downtown Access Project, a lot in the name of what the objective is, to bring more access to Downtown, but of course I know that's not the only objective here.

Can you give us a little perspective on what this project specifically is going to do and how it's going to change the infrastructure that exists now?

(Kristina Swallow) Thank you for that question, and thanks for having us to talk about this project.

I am excited about this project beyond belief.

It's something that I'm really excited that we at NDOT are going to be able to deliver.

For us, we have to do the project for several different reasons.

So the viaduct is actually comprised of two bridges: The first bridge, which basically just goes over the railroad, was constructed in the '60s.

The second bridge was constructed in the '80s.

I didn't live here in the '80s, but I don't think anybody who did live here in the '80s could ever have imagined how much our community was going to grow and how critical that corridor was going to be.

So everybody in our valley uses that corridor at one point in time.

It may not be every day, may not be every week, but everybody in our valley uses that corridor, and like you said, it can be fun to drive on unless you have a trailer.

So we're trying to figure out how do we make sure we deliver a project in that critical part of our community that really meets the needs of everyone?

Our bridges are old; we want to make sure that they don't fail us, so we have to replace them for that.

Just for aging infrastructure, they need to be replaced.

We have safety considerations along the corridor because we have so many more people going in and out of that corridor and using all of the very closely spaced exit ramps and on-ramps.

We have safety considerations, and we have reliability issues partly because of that safety, partly because of all of the weaving.

So we want to fix that, so we're looking at delivering a 3-1/2 mile-long project, roughly from Rancho to Eastern replacing the viaduct.

There are three options we're looking at.

Two of them are above ground, but when we replace the-- if it gets replaced above ground, it will no longer be a viaduct.

It'll be a series of several bridges and the other remaining areas on embankment.

That area underneath the viaduct is a challenge for us and for the City.

I imagine Joey might talk about that a little bit as we go.

So it would be a series of bridges with some embankment if we go with either of the two above-ground options, but then we're also looking at the fact that the bridges are a barrier.

It's a significant visual barrier, so we wanted to see if perhaps an underground option would be viable.

So we're looking at those three options.

We're in the very early stages in the environmental review process, really working with our community broadly, the adjacent community that lives right there and will be most impacted by the project and is most impacted by the project today.

We're working with them.

We're working with our local public agencies, not just the City but the County and North Las Vegas.

Everybody drives through there.

And, you know, the RTC, so we're really trying to figure out how do we deliver a new transportation project through the heart of our community that will likely have to serve our community for decades.

-For a long time, and I would imagine with bridges and anything that's above, there must be a lot more maintenance than, as you mentioned, the below grade.

And I want to come back to that because I think that's probably a surprise to a lot of our viewers to think that we might be doing something that is below the surface of the ground here.

Visually you mentioned is one of the objectives.

Are there other ones?

-You know, visually is the primary; it's really how do we remove it, but-- the barrier.

That option doesn't come without its own maintenance challenges.

I don't know about your viewers' awareness of Las Vegas' name, it's "the meadows," right?

We have an underground aquifer and we have groundwater that's actually very close to the surface in that Downtown area.

So that is providing us with another challenge that we need to consider if we do the underground option, not to mention all of the utilities that go through the area.

The City of Las Vegas has extensive sewer and water reuse facilities that cross the freeway there, so it doesn't come without challenges.

On top of those challenges, there's additional environmental issues that we'll have to deal with in terms of the community impact if we go with the underground option.

So in some regards, I think people are like why wouldn't you do that?

And in other regards, we're really looking at how do we deliver the showcase project that needs to be delivered for transportation in the heart of the valley without having a significant impact on that adjacent community, because they're the ones that are going to bear the brunt of whatever we deliver, so we need to make sure.

So we're thinking about what are those mitigations that we put in place?

There's a lot to this and I know we don't have a lot of time, and I could talk about it for the entire time we have.

-For sure, but a great base for our conversation.

Joey, I have to go to you.

Let's talk about these communities here.

As we've already mentioned, the Westside and Downtown, two areas where the City has invested a lot into, and there is a city master plan that has been approved.

Tell us a little bit.

When you were looking at the Downtown Access Project, what are some of the must-haves when you're looking at the city planning side of this?

(Joey Paskey) It's a very good point.

We are so excited about this project, and it runs right through our hearts.

So the City's got a very vested interest in this, and we are responsible for the funding, operations and maintenance of the local roadways, but we don't like the travelers to necessarily know.

We want it to be a seamless operation, so we want to work very closely with NDOT on that.

That's important.

Our 2015 master plan projects there will be over 23,000 new residents in the next 30 years just in the Downtown area alone.

Another 10- to 15,000 in the East Las Vegas community where the infrastructure is very aged and it needs-- so we really see this as an opportunity to improve the infrastructure and really improve safety and capacity into and out of our downtown areas for the residents, for the tourists visiting, you know, Fremont Street Experience as well as the movement of goods through Southern Nevada.

That's very critical as this is an important corridor for that as well.

-And as you've already mentioned, this isn't just the two towns you mentioned, East Las Vegas and then a lot of commuters that are coming through that area as well, and of course the big question a lot of the public wants to know is when we get to construction phase, what does that mean for traffic?

What does it mean for trying to reroute traffic?

How much is the City involved in that type of plan?

-The City is involved with NDOT on sometimes a daily basis on this already, and we're not even to the design phase yet.

So we're working hand in hand with them now.

Again, we're not only concerned about it after construction; during construction is going to be really critical.

It's already critical now.

As you see, we've got a little Las Vegas Boulevard project going on as it is.

So it's something that we are involved in, and we've been in lockstep with NDOT on it.

-Kipp, can I jump in just for a second.

-Yes, please.

-We have a model.

This is not new for us.

When we did the design/build project Project Neon, the City was co-located with our design/builder for the duration of the project, and they were extensively involved as we really looked at the maintenance of traffic effort and how we moved people, because we knew they were going to be on the city surface streets.

And you know, we also knew that our project had to help the City with some of their challenges, all of those adjacent streets.

So this is not new to us.

We learned a lot on Project Neon, and I think we're using those lessons and we're building on them.

The City is a critical partner in this, and like Joey said, we're talking to them every day.

But I imagine that when we get to the delivery of this project, they will be a core team member co-located with our design/builder as we work through all of the design elements.

-Co-location and collaboration are so important to this, obviously.

David, I got to bring you into the conversation.

Let's talk about the regional aspects of this and things that the regional transportation center are focused on.

Of course public transportation is one of those, but also a lot of the planning in our roadways and still doing some of the planning and projects on our highways as well.

What are some of the must-haves you see when you're looking at this specific Downtown Access Project?

(David Swallow) Well, I think the important thing is connectivity from where people live, you know, affordable housing options, and then access to good jobs, to educational opportunities and all the amenities that we see not only in Downtown but, you know, we have major employment in Downtown Las Vegas as well as along the Las Vegas Strip.

We want to make sure that we're connecting the community together, connecting people to opportunities that are there and not just whether or not they have a car.

I think it's important that we have-- the freeway system is critically important for our community, but we also have to look at the surface streets, how people are accessing whether they're driving, riding transit, riding a bike or walking, making sure those options are available to everyone.

-And let's talk specifically about some of the particulars of the plan.

One of those is closing a lot of the streets that are running now underneath the viaduct but still keeping some of those open for pedestrian traffic.

When you look at the plan, how friendly is it maybe to some of those pedestrians, bicycle traffic, those kinds of things going maybe from west to Downtown?

-Well, the important part here is that I think now we see a different philosophy where we want to focus on complete streets, streets that are designed to be safe for all users whether you're walking, biking, taking transit or driving a car.

And so with that, that's more in the mindset now whether it's-- the City of Las Vegas has done an outstanding job with a number of the roadways in Downtown, converting them from just focused on cars to focused on people and how to enable good mobility for everyone.

Same thing within NDOT.

I think everybody understands the need to provide options for those who need choices, but some people don't have a choice.

There's so many households that just do not have a car.

They don't have access to a car even whether they're friends or relatives, and not only that, there's a number of households that are low income, and they just can't afford some of the options.

So we have to focus on moving people and doing it in a way that they feel safe and they feel comfortable, and I think there's a lot of opportunity with this project.

-Joey, I want to go to you just because on the city planning side, there are a lot of city planners in urban areas that are looking at some of these highway systems that go through the middle of cities and either removing those systems completely or changing those to a public transportation, rail-type system.

Are there any advocates at the city level that are interested?

Local businesses maybe, or local nonprofits that are looking at that and may be advocating for a fourth or maybe a fifth choice here.

-I think a big part of this project, as David said, is really providing a truly multimodal transportation system.

That's really important to us at the City, at NDOT, RTC, and really everybody in Southern Nevada.

This project does just that.

It expands that HOV network, brings things right into the heart of Downtown.

Hopefully it's going to get people to start to think about getting out of their single-occupancy vehicles, maybe getting on a bus.

It's got a great trail system proposed with it to get people doing that as well.

One of the other things that's at the forefront of the City's mind with this is equity, so as we work on this project and we see that it really is a unique opportunity, as Kristina mentioned before, to maybe physically reconnect some of these neighborhoods that were separated when the freeway was built.

As you mentioned, there are projects all over the country right now that are doing just that.

They're either putting a cap on a freeway or a lid, and it makes a park or commercial space or housing, a multitude of things.

So that's definitely something as we go through this process is a big focus of ours is really trying to provide a more cohesive community and transportation network.

-Very important, and of course talking about cohesive communities here, regardless of the corridors past, present or future, traffic management is a very important part of this conversation of course.

Our FAST system helps manage Southern Nevada's busy traffic, and our Nevada Week team went out and gets to explain how that system works.

Let's take a look at that.

Traffic management is essential to the way a large city functions.

In Las Vegas there's a very modern traffic management system called FAST.

(Theresa Gaisser) FAST stands for Freeway and Arterial System of Transportation.

We are a division of the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada.

The FAST system is run out of the Southern Nevada Traffic Management Center.

FAST was one of the first in the nation to house several traffic and safety-related agencies in one location.

The agencies combined help to manage Las Vegas' unique traffic safety demands.

Southern Nevada is home to about a little over two million people.

Typical conditions, we have about 43 million visitors.

That equates to about hosting a Super Bowl every single weekend.

Managing the area's highways and roadways requires FAST to be proactive.

FAST software obtains up-to-the-minute information from 9-1-1 and crowdsourcing applications to help prevent and manage traffic incidents.

With this information, once we have found it on the cameras, identified it and began our process of informing the public through posting messages or changing lanes on the ATM gantries, we're also pushing out that information back to the motoring public through our partnerships, through ways to share that information with people who may not be familiar with the area.

All of this information helps drivers plan the best travel route for them, travel routes that will become even busier as Las Vegas continues to grow.

For Nevada Week, I'm Heather Caputo.

-Thank you so much, Heather.

We appreciate it.

The FAST system in general leads us to maybe talking a little bit about tech here, and I'd like to do that if we could.

David, let's talk about the FAST system, and let's talk about just how things are changing.

We have smart phones, we have smart cars.

I'm hearing now there's this term "smart highways" is something we should be talking about as well.

When you're looking at maybe the FAST system or other forms of technology that's managing traffic, how and what do we need to do to keep that going, to be relevant with technology 20 years down the road?

-Well, I think an important part of it is having partners that are open to trying new things, and I think that's just part of the Las Vegas culture.

We want to try new things.

We want to see if we can do things better.

Thankfully, with our FAST team working on behalf of the City of Las Vegas, the County, the other cities as well as the Nevada Department of Transportation, we work to operate the arterial management system as well as the freeway management system in kind of a cohesive network.

Going beyond that though, it's taking advantage of the technology that is available today.

Not just the hard technology like putting devices out on the roadway, but really collecting data from a number of sources whether it's people's mobile phones to their cars that have vehicle telematics in it.

That information is being aggregated by different companies, and they provide that information to us to then use to make proactive moves towards improving traffic operations.

It's a very unique opportunity now, especially with the development of artificial intelligence and being able to process an amazing amount of data just instantly and then communicating that as useful information to us.

-And I mean, we've got to talk about automation here, too.

We have automated vehicles that are on the road, and I'm imagining all that data at some point, I hope I'm not just, you know, waxing philosophical here, could potentially come back and be able to manage how traffic is going as far as cars being able to slow down and speed up on the highways.

Is that something that we're looking at?

-It's something we're already doing, frankly.

It's one where we have this information coming in.

So the data is being collected, and it's being processed almost instantaneously and then coming to us to say hey, we have a-- you know, there's a vehicle incident.

We get notified of a vehicle incident minutes before anybody calls 911.

If there's a crash, we found when we went forward with our Waycare platform, one that, you know, in the past someone-- everybody thinks they drive by, they see a crash, they go somebody needs to call that in.

Well, everybody's thinking the same thing, and it could be anywhere from five to ten minutes before somebody would actually call it in.

Now we're recognizing the incident almost instantly.

It comes up on our screens at our traffic management center.

Our techs will be able to zoom in instantaneously with our cameras.

We're in the same traffic management center as Nevada Highway Patrol and Department of Public Safety, and being able to say okay, here's where the incident is.

This is how best to get the troopers to that incident, say it's on the freeway, and to have a much faster response time which, as you know, in a critical crash, every minute counts.

-Every minute counts for safety, and also for traffic management; it's so important.

It's so interesting to see the co-location of services there within the FAST management also.

Kristin, I want to come to you-- Kristina, sorry.

Brick and mortar here when you're building this roadway, I'm assuming it needs to somehow incorporate some of this technology and where technology's going, where it's emerging and where it's evolving.

How do you do that?

-You know, I think we're really fortunate in our valley because our valley is so young, so a lot of the things that we've been delivering that Dave just mentioned are things we've been able to deliver because we already have conduit.

We already have fiber.

We already have a lot of that IT infrastructure in the ground, and as we move forward and deliver this project, we'll be doing the same.

We'll be delivering that IT infrastructure, but we'll also have to be thinking about providing perhaps extra empty conduit so that if we need to pull something later in the future, we do that.

But one thing I think we forget-- and it's funny that we forget this because we experience this realtime with ourselves on our own technology-- is technology is not done.

Technology, you know, I think a former CEO of the RTC used to say technology is the new asphalt, and we all know that asphalt needs to be repaved, right?

We come in, we do maintenance.

we repave it, we take out those lanes, all of these things.

You have to do that with technology too, which gives us that opportunity as technology evolves, as we get to new greater horizons in that tech space, we will also be updating and maintaining all of our tech to keep up with that.

One of the things on this project that we do fully anticipate will come in is it will be very similar to what we have on south I-15 now with the gantry system and the active lane management.

So that is a key part of our overall reliability on the system is recognizing as we as drivers are already naturally slowing down, making sure we slow down the queue behind them so we don't have that tail-end collision.

So we're working on making sure that, you know, technology that we have that's proven good, we roll that out further, continuing to learn, continuing to evolve, but technology isn't stagnant.

Just like you replace your cell phone every-- I don't know, some people do it every year.

I'm more on three to four years.

Just like you replace your cell phone, we're going to have to continually update, maintain and replace our tech systems.

-Yes.

It's so important that we do have that conduit as you mentioned.

So important here.

That continuity conversation to this, I wanted to bring up the high-occupancy vehicle part to this conversation.

The Review-Journal ran an editorial in February of 2021 questioning if HOV should continue.

This is part of the Downtown Access Project.

They do want to expand and have more HOV lanes.

They cite in that article that the Nevada Department of Education has yet to produce any numbers.

Can you give us some evidence that HOV is working here in the valley with some of the projects that we already have online now?

-So the 95 project-- our HOV goes back decades.

The 95 project, the initial project I think was just basically the Spaghetti Bowl to Rainbow, then we extended it further north.

We have an HOV plan that's been updated several times and now includes also the full valley including 95 going out to Henderson.

When we rolled out the extension of the HOV lanes on Project Neon, we rolled them out in May of 2019, and we immediately got a whole lot of feedback from the community, lots of different feedback.

Feedback where they weren't necessarily working the way we had intended.

So we came in and by the end of 2019, we revamped them.

We created some new openings and new exits to really make sure that they were serving their purpose so the folks that work on the Strip could get into them to use the flyover.

The way we delivered them, we couldn't.

So I'll own as an agency we're learning, we're growing, we're evolving and we're listening to the community.

And then the pandemic happened and traffic fell off, and we really didn't get to start collecting the data on the system that we had anticipated.

But what we did do and we committed to the community was we were going to already start looking at it.

So we've run all the checks and balances on our system, and what we found is there doesn't appear from the tech space, from the modeling space, to be a reason that we need to keep the 24 hours.

So we went out and we got a consultant.

The consultant is-- we literally just awarded the contract on Monday.

They're going to start looking at what are the data points and could we roll back the hours to some extent.

We anticipate that pilot would go into play early next year.

And it may still be 24 hours when they actually start collecting all of the data on who's using it and the safety and the reliability, but if they can, we're going to do a pilot study.

We plan on running that pilot study for 18 to 24 months with quarterly updates.

If we see a real significant safety degradation, we will roll back to the full 24 hours because we don't want to degrade the safety on the network because that also has a reliability impact.

-If I could jump in really quick, because you're talking about a great point here which is of course safety, but also the public's input is so important to this.

It's so important on the HOV side, and I wanted to go Joey.

Let's talk about the public voice here on a project like this and at the City level.

What kind of opportunities are there?

Since we are in the planning stage of this in addition to some of the city planning that's going on too, how can the public get involved in this?

-So NDOT has actually done a really good job of creating stakeholder groups and getting our messages out there.

They're in again the environmental study which is a lot of public outreach just by definition.

People can definitely contact NDOT, they can contact us at the City.

Like I said, we're working in lockstep with each other, so we were happy to share those voices.

We work with our Downtown stakeholders all the time.

So again, we work together often, and we take everything into consideration.

Everything that gets brought to me gets brought to NDOT, and we discuss it.

But there's many opportunities.

They have a great website, we do as well, and happy to take anything into consideration that people are going to bring to us.

If they have a concern, you know, we're in the business of moving people and making sure they can get to where they need to go.

-Kipp, can I give that website?

-Absolutely, and I wanted to promote that website just because the information on there, some of the schematics you have are really wonderful.

We obviously used those for the show.

Yes, please do.

-So the website is NDOTDAP.com.

So NDOT-- Downtown Access Project-- DAP.com.

We're actually currently soliciting from the adjacent communities.

We're doing environmental justice surveys so we're soliciting their direct input.

Now, in addition to what we did when we did the temporary closures back in March and April, if they don't respond to the mailers, we're doing door knockers door-to-door.

So we're really in that adjacent community, but if you're not getting one of those surveys or mailers because you don't live right immediate, you can go to our website NDOTDAP.com, and there's a phone number there too.

It's in English and Spanish.

We have people that will call you back in Spanish if that's your primary language.

So we want to hear from the community.

We've learned as a DOT over the years that our best projects are delivered when we work together as a community, all the local agencies with public input.

-And we have about 20 seconds left.

I just want to ask you, opposition, support?

Where does this seem to be skewing on what you're getting from public comment right now?

-You know, in general right now, we're getting comments on what we're doing.

I don't know that there's a lot of opposition or support.

It's how to make the project better and how we can better serve that community.

-Well, thank you so much.

What a great conversation.

We really appreciate it.

And thank you, as always, for joining us this week on Nevada Week.

Now, for resources discussed on the show including how to voice your opinion about the Downtown Access Project, visit our website at vegaspbs.org/nevada-week.

You can also always find us on social media at @nevadaweek.

Thanks again, and we'll see you next week.

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