$560 million awarded to Vegas highway widening project

The Nevada Department of Transportation board on Monday approved the largest contract in state history.

The $559.4 million contract with Kiewit Infrastructure West will pay for Project NEON, a 3.7-mile widening of Interstate 15 between Sahara Avenue and the Spaghetti Bowl in downtown Las Vegas.

Gov. Brian Sandoval said thanks to NDOT staff and Kiewit, that is nearly $500 million less than the road project was originally expected to cost. In addition, it will be done by 2019.

“They’ve taken a billion plus project and got it down to $559 million and taken the construction window from 30 years to five years,” he said.

With right-of-way costs, environmental studies, staff time and other costs, the total bill for NEON will come in at about $900 million.

“At one point in time we were in excess of $2 billion,” said NDOT’s Cole Mortensen.

Sandoval said if the project had taken 30 years to complete, “by the time we finished this it would have been time to build another one.”

He said other than the Hoover Dam, this is the biggest public works project every in Nevada and that it is the biggest state project in history.

That stretch of highway is the busiest in Nevada with more than 300,000 vehicles daily and engineers say traffic is expected to double by 2035.

Project NEON will add lanes to the highway, connect the High Occupancy Vehicle (carpool) lanes on U.S. 95 to the I-15 express lanes with a flyover bridge and create direct access carpool ramps and a new interchange called “Neon Gateway.”

Other planned improvements include reconstructing the Charleston Boulevard interchange, extending Grand Central Parkway over the Union Pacific tracks and connecting to Industrial Road to improve downtown access.

The board also approved issuing $205 million in highway fund bonds to pay for the first year’s construction. Project manager Dale Keller said more bonds will be sought in the following two years to pay for the rest of the work.

The board also gave NDOT permission to auction off three parcels of Carson City land that were purchased for the bypass freeway but are no longer needed.

They are along Broadleaf Lane at Alexa Way, U.S. 395 at Alexa Way and Broadleaf Lane at Imperial Way.

Lands manager Paul Saucedo told the board the sale prices must be within 90 percent of the fair market value of each parcel. Their estimated value is just over $30,000 apiece.