End of Car-nado nears, but more Spaghetti Bowl closures coming

The end of Car-nado is in sight, but the well-known whirlwind will subside slowly.

Meanwhile, motorists should prepare for a far more ominous — and lengthier — round of complications by mid-March.

Car-nado blew into downtown Las Vegas with much fanfare — and initial worry — on Oct. 26, when crews closed Interstate 15’s southbound and northbound ramps connecting to northbound U.S. Highway 95, along with freeway offramps to Martin Luther King Boulevard.

The storm of construction starts clearing Feb. 24, when vehicles will be allowed back onto the ramp linking northbound Interstate 15 to northbound U.S. Highway 95, said Tony Illia, spokesman for the Nevada Department of Transportation.

The Martin Luther King Boulevard offramp from the northbound U.S. 95 will reopen March 5, while the street’s offramp from the northbound I-15 reopens on March 30.

Car-nado finally ends on April 24, when the ramp connecting southbound I-15 to the northbound U.S. 95 reopens.

“It was pretty smooth,” Illia said of the four-month project to rebuild a bridge linking northbound I-15 to northbound U.S. Highway 95, making room for a flyover ramp that will be designated for high-occupancy vehicles.

“I think there was a lot of pent-up anticipation and people prepared for the worst,” Illia said. “To our relief, the worst didn’t happen.”

Car-nado marked the first of three major closures connected to Project Neon, a $1 billion effort to redesign and add traffic lanes along I-15 from the U.S. 95 interchange to Sahara Avenue by July 2019.

The next phase for Nevada’s largest freeway infrastructure project begins in mid-March, when U.S. Highway 95 will be narrowed to two lanes in each direction between Rancho Drive and the Spaghetti Bowl interchange, Illia said.

The major restriction is expected to last through December, coinciding with periodic closures along freeway ramps and surface streets.

Given the catchiness of the Car-nado brand, NDOT officials plan to announce another pithy nickname by early March.

Unfortunately, the closely guarded secret has yet to be shared with the Road Warrior.

My bet is that the next moniker will be pretty tame, since Gov. Brian Sandoval was not exactly amused about the last project being compared to a natural disaster.

“It’s not our intention to scare people off,” Illia said. “But if you treat the huge projects like any other road closure, then it gets lost in all the noise.”

LEFT AT THE LAKES

Steve from Las Vegas wanted to know why city crews have not installed left-turn arrows for traffic signals along Fort Apache Road at Lake South, Mariner Cove and Lake North drives.

“Fort Apache is heavily traveled and there have been numerous accidents and close calls for cars that are making left turns,” Steve wrote in an email to the Road Warrior. “Are there any plans to remedy this situation for these three streets?”

There aren’t any immediate plans to install left-turn arrows for these traffic signals, Las Vegas city spokeswoman Margaret Kurtz said. Part of the reason is that the city hasn’t received any requests, nor have there been any reports of crashes involving vehicles making a left turn onto these streets.

Kurtz said that the city could order crash data going back three years. However, adding left-turn arrows at these three streets would decrease the amount of “green light time” along Fort Apache and create traffic jams.

EASING EASTERN

Like most drivers, Robert from Las Vegas noticed that Eastern Avenue can be a pretty rough ride, given all the potholes between Flamingo and Desert Inn roads.

“I have lived here for 37 years and I cannot remember the last time this section of road was smooth,” Robert wrote in an email to the Road Warrior. “Why won’t Clark County send some money to fix this, since it is a main north-south artery?”

We’ll all have to live a little longer with the pockmarked road, Robert. There are plans to repave this section of Eastern in Fall 2018, after a nearby water utility project is completed, Clark County spokesman Dan Kulin said.

PATCHING PECOS

Bob from Las Vegas wanted to praise Clark County officials for doing a “beautiful job” by repaving Pecos Road between Flamingo Road and Tropicana Avenue. However, Bob noticed some patchy asphalt after a construction company recently did some work in the 4100 block of Pecos.

The temporary patches will be replaced with permanent asphalt when the weather warms up this spring, Kulin said.

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