‘Widen the I-15’: Las Vegas mayor makes familiar request to California

Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman carried out her New Year’s Eve week tradition of calling on California officials to widen Interstate 15 south of the Nevada state line.

Following busy holiday weekends in Las Vegas, such as New Year’s Eve, I-15 southbound routinely backs up for miles. Goodman has made the call for widening several times over the years, usually around holiday weekends.

Welcome to all those coming to Las Vegas to celebrate and ring in 2024! We are excited that traveling between Southern California and Las Vegas may someday include the option of high speed rail, but in the meantime California needs to widen the I-15 from Barstow to Stateline.

— Carolyn G. Goodman (@mayoroflasvegas) December 27, 2023

New Year’s Eve weekend in Las Vegas is expected to draw around 356,000 visitors.

“Welcome to all those coming to Las Vegas to celebrate and ring in 2024,” Goodman said in a post on social media platform X. “We are excited that traveling between Southern California and Las Vegas may someday include the option of high speed rail, but in the meantime California needs to widen the I-15 from Barstow to Stateline.”

Goodman told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that President Joe Biden’s recent visit to Las Vegas to award Brightline West a $3 billion grant for their planned high-speed rail project spurred her most recent post.

“It’s exciting and the focus is on Southwest infrastructure needs, but the key is that’s years out to accomplish and we need relief now,” Goodman said in a text message to the Review-Journal.

Despite Goodman’s repeated calls for expanding the highway, Caltrans has stated multiple times that they have no plans to widen I-15 between Southern Nevada and Southern California. Caltrans didn’t immediately respond Wednesday to an inquiry by the Review-Journal on if any discussions had recently been had regarding I-15 widening.

Caltrans and the Nevada Department of Transportation worked together on a $5.1 million project to bring a part-time lane to I-15, which runs for about five miles from the Nevada-California border to the agricultural checkpoint. The lane, which runs on the shoulder of the interstate, is only open to traffic between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. Sundays and Mondays.

On Labor Day around noon, traffic began to back up near Primm, which was an approximate 12-mile improvement compared to past years when backups started around Jean, according to Caltrans.

NDOT Director Tracy Larkin Thomason said in September that the part-time lane moved where the bottleneck begins, but it didn’t end the traffic issue.

“It basically seems that the bottleneck has moved from Nevada to Mountain Pass, California,” Thomason said.

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