Downtown Access road project shelved due to community impact, financial concerns
A major road project planned for Interstate 11 in downtown Las Vegas that could have cost more than $5 billion has been shelved, partly because of rising construction costs.
The National Environmental Policy Act study for the stretch of I-11, formerly known as U.S. Highway 95, between Rancho Drive and Mohave Road was halted by the Nevada Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration, NDOT announced this month.
While the study was being conducted, officials determined the Downtown Access Project would be too disruptive to the surrounding community and that the estimated project cost was going to be a challenge for NDOT and the FHWA.
“Ultimately the lack of financial resources to support the anticipated cost of construction, which just in general speaking is several billion dollars,” NDOT Director Tracy Larkin Thomason said during last week’s NDOT Board of Directors meeting.
When announced in 2022, the project was estimated to run between $1.6 billion and $3 billion, with that figure ballooning to between $1.8 billion and $5.6 billion as of last summer, according to NDOT.
The project’s cancellation comes on the heels of NDOT and Henderson announcing the city would change how the Henderson Interchange project would be carried out, because of an increase in the budget.
Originally planned with a design-build approach, the project’s costs were coming in “considerably higher than we were expecting,” leading NDOT and Henderson to reconfigure the interchange in phases, Larkin Thomason said earlier this year.
Since no contract was issued, NDOT did not disclose how much the project’s price rose from the originally estimated $495 million to $520 million cost.
The rapidly rising construction costs are a problem that NDOT will be dealing with well into the future.
“Over the past three years, highway construction costs have surged by 64 percent, while revenue from the Highway Fund has not kept pace,” NDOT spokeswoman Kelsey McFarland said. “A smaller contributing factor is the growing use of fuel-efficient and alternative-fuel vehicles, which has impacted fuel tax revenue.”
Inflation increasing a road project’s cost isn’t unique to Nevada and is something that all states are dealing with nationwide, she noted.
“Many states and the federal government are exploring alternative funding strategies to address these evolving needs,” McFarland said.
With the ending of the NEPA process for the Downtown Access Project, any future planned project for the stretch of I-11 would require a new environmental process to be conducted.
Three options were presented to residents in 2022, with two of those being elevated options and one being a below-grade version. No matter which version was chosen, 1.6 miles of bridges would’ve been replaced to match the chosen option.
High occupancy vehicle, or HOV, lane intersections would have been added at City and Maryland parkways as part of the project.
The three options would have cost between $1.8 billion and $5.6 billion and would have taken between four to seven years to complete. The project was set to be the most expensive public works project in Nevada history if officials had chosen to move forward with the work.
Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X. Send questions and comments to roadwarrior@reviewjournal.com.