Speed Limit Set for Route 160

By Omar Sofradzija

By OMAR SOFRADZIJA

REVIEW-JOURNAL

A fast, dangerous stretch of state Route 160 won’t be as fast by early next week, which authorities hope also will make it less deadly for commuters.

The five-mile section of Route 160, also known as Blue Diamond Road, will have speeds set at a uniform 45 mph – down from a maximum of 65 mph – from Interstate 15 to Durango Drive.

The change is expected to come Monday or Tuesday, when speed limit signs are replaced, Bob McKenzie, a spokesman for the Nevada Department of Transportation, said Thursday.

Trooper Kevin Honea, a spokesman for the Nevada Highway Patrol, said it is the first of several safety measures officials hope to implement on the route.

“We’ve come to a consensus on how to at least put a Band-Aid on it until everything is fixed,” he said.

“If people are willing to abide by the (new) speed limit, I think it’ll make a considerable difference.”

There will be no grace period in enforcing the new speed limit, McKenzie said.

Since July 1, at least 18 people have died in traffic wrecks on a roughly 50-mile stretch of Route 160 between I-15 and Pahrump.

That stretch is a mostly two-lane 65 mph highway that has few stoplights and has seen traffic volumes triple along some sections in recent years.

The rising death toll on Route 160 led Clark County and state planners, politicians and developers to meet in late January to try to find short-term solutions to long-term safety problems there.

One proposal was to lower the speed limit, which some area residents had long argued for.

“State engineers have taken a look at it and decided what we’d do to alleviate some of the problems we have there by reducing it to 45 mph,” McKenzie said.

Currently, the speed limit in the stretch from I-15 to Durango fluctuates between 45 mph and 65 mph.

The new speed limit will “give uniform speed limits along that corridor,” McKenzie said.

Another safety measure was Monday’s start of a Nevada Highway Patrol crackdown on speeders and other reckless drivers on Route 160 during weekday morning and afternoon rush hours.

Authorities believe dangerous driving behaviors, such as speeding or failing to stop at stop signs, are a big cause of wrecks on the road.

Honea did not have figures available on how many tickets or warnings have so far been issued as part of that campaign.

Many officials believe the long-term fix is to widen Route 160; that project is partly under way. Officials hoped to have the road widened before the problems became acute, but they have said the pace of the growth in traffic has caught them off-guard.

A widening of the route to a total of eight lanes from I-15 to Rainbow Boulevard won’t be finished until early 2008. And improvements beyond that three-mile stretch have yet to be firmly scheduled or planned.

McKenzie said other initiatives are planned for Route 160 and nearby state Route 159 near Red Rock National Conservation Area. He said those initiatives would be announced soon.

Some residents in the area, who have been increasingly vocal as deaths mounted on Route 160, were pleased with the news of the reduced speed limit.

“I think people won’t like it at first. Change always comes with resistance. But I think it’ll make it safer, definitely,” said Heather Fisher, who lives in Blue Diamond, northwest of the reduced- speed zone.

She said long-term fixes would have a greater impact. One proposal is a connector road from Route 160 and the Las Vegas Beltway, which would shift some of the traffic from the route to the Beltway.

Fisher said the proliferation of business driveways along Route 160 is adding to the safety problem.

“All the time, the County Commission is approving driveways onto 160, all over the place,” she said. “Make it a limited-access road.”