$172M Boulder Highway revamp project set to kick off in Henderson

Over the last six years Boulder Highway in Henderson has accounted for 25 percent of traffic fatalities in the city, so local officials are ready to tackle improving safety along the busy corridor.

The long-discussed Reimagine Boulder Highway improvement project is slated to get underway this year in Henderson.

The $172 million road project on a seven-and-a-half-mile stretch of the 15-mile-long Boulder Highway will begin later this year in Henderson, although an exact start date has yet to be determined, according to Henderson spokesman Justin Emerson.

The project, which will take approximately three years to complete, is slated to be finished by the end of 2027.

Talks regarding improving Boulder Highway began in 2002, with a series of community planning initiatives taking place in the 20-plus years since, leading up to the first major overhaul of the roadway.

The first stretch to be upgraded is located between Wagon Wheel Drive and Tulip Falls Drive, near Gibson Road in Henderson.

The project will cut the number of traffic lanes from six to four, enhance pedestrian zones, add a multiuse lane on both sides, widen sidewalks and provide improved street lighting.

“Safety is the city’s number one priority,” Henderson city engineer Steven Conner said Monday during a news conference. “When you reduce the travel lanes to two lanes in each direction, there is less time that someone has to walk across the road, which reduces the amount of time the signals stay red for someone to cross the road.”

With the reduced waiting time for pedestrians to cross, Conner said the roadway, when the project is complete, will operate in a similar manner compared with today, even with the reduction of travel lanes.

Elevated bike lanes will be added on both sides of Boulder Highway, in addition to signalized midblock crossings and a center-run bus rapid transit system.

“The center-running rapid transit will be one lane in each direction, dedicated for the buses currently on the road,” Conner said. “We’ll have shelters in the median, and those will be protected with 360 degrees of protection.”

Those protections include bollards to ensure the safety of transit riders, Conner said.

Positive stride for safety

Erin Breen, director of Road Equity Alliance, applauded the project’s safety elements, given the dangerous nature of Boulder Highway especially to pedestrians. Breen noted that she has been advocating for safety upgrades on Boulder Highway for 10 years.

“Having center-running transit really does take it out of a travel lane. We hope that it continues all the way down Boulder Highway,” Breen said. “Pedestrians only have to cross half of the roadway, so it’s literally cut in half. The number of places they’ll have to cross the street also increases because it’s every stop.”

When Boulder Highway was constructed in 1931 as part of the building of Hoover Dam, the area it traveled through was largely rural. Now the full stretch features 20,000 homes, apartments and condominiums and more than 970 commercial lots within a half-mile radius of Boulder Highway. The road sees 36,000 vehicles and 10,000 RTC transit riders daily.

More work to come

The project’s funding will derive from $83.5 million in state and local funding, nearly $48.9 million in federal funding and $39.9 million from federal INFRA grant.

The other seven and a half miles of Boulder Highway that are not included in the initial portion of the project will be addressed at a later date. That work will be a collaboration between the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada, Clark County and the city of Las Vegas.

“Our goal as the city is to be the first one to start the project with rapid transit and hopefully everyone else follows suit,” Conner said.

Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X.