By Vernon Robison

Despite a difficult economy, the City of Mesquite has much to celebrate. This year, our neighbors to the northeast have gotten underway with a whole rash of new transportation projects that, when the economy begins to turn, are sure to usher in a period of great prosperity for the City.

The West Mesquite I-15 Interchange 120 is currently approaching its halfway point. By next summer a deluxe off-ramp is expected to be completed with a state-of-the-art roundabout on either side of the interstate. This $14.3 million NDOT project has spared no expense in its effort to accomodate traffic flow, enhance esthetic and entice highway travellers to leave the interstate and explore the city.

But that project is only the beginning. The city is already underway on another major thoroughfare on the western outskirts of town. The Lower Flat Top Drive project proposes an alternate route from Bertha Howe Dr. near the Sports Complex, running south along the foothills of Flat Top Mesa and connecting in with Ben Franklin Way. From there the bypass route will connect with Pioneer Blvd and is eventually planned to intersect with I-15 at an entirely new Exit 118 Interchange. The Lower Flat Top Drive project, not inclusive of the 118 interchange, is already funded at $7.3 million. It will also include a multi-use trail system running alongside the new thoroughfare. This beautiful trail will open the way for runners, walkers and cyclists to enjoy the scenic area.

The City is also aggressively seeking NDOT funding for the proposed new 118 Interchange which is projected to cost $20 million.

Of course, all of this is just what is in the immediate pipeline for the city. It doesn’t even begin to speak of longer-term plans like the Mesquite airport relocation project which will bring yet another I-15 Interchange and untold economic growth to the west of the City. All these ambitious plans are great reasons to celebrate for the folks in Virgin Valley. And we in Moapa Valley can celebrate them too because they will be good for the whole northeast Clark County region.

But for those of us who have been here in Moapa Valley a while, and have watched all of this happening on the other side of the mesa, it’s hard not to feel a little crestfallen that we haven’t shared a little in the windfall. While our transportation needs have been at least as urgent as those in Mesquite, the last two decades have brought relatively little funding to improve the major thoroughfares in Moapa Valley. This neglect has continued through boom times and recession alike, even though we have seen exponential growth in the traffic count on our highways through those years.

For example, Moapa Valley Boulevard, rural route though it may be, is a perilous thoroughfare. It has needed widening for decades. The road’s increased traffic and the new complexity of its traffic patterns calls out for, at least, a turn lane to be built all the way down the center of the highway from the Mortuary to the Game Farm. But for many years nothing has been done about it.

A stroke of good fortune suddenly smiled on NDOT last year, and there arose a sensible opportunity for a long term solution. The Clark County Water Reclamation District was installing its sewer pipeline from downtown Overton along the highway to Lyman St. in Logandale. By completion, the district was required to newly pave the road. District engineers, listening to members of the community, suggested that NDOT take this fortunate opportunity to widen the highway and add the long needed center lane. After all, the project required the district to build at least a temporary travel lane to keep traffic moving during construction. Going just a little further and getting the job done right couldn’t be done any cheaper for NDOT than right then. In effect, the state highway would have gotten three brand new lanes for the price of one.

But NDOT inexplicably turned its up nose at this opportunity. Yes it was a difficult budget year; we all know. But it would have cost mere pennies compared to, for example, what’s currently in the pipeline in Mesquite. Still the NDOT bureaucrats couldn’t be sold on the value and they wouldn’t justify any funding for it.

What’s worse, none of our elected officials stepped up to hammer the common sense of this ‘no-brainer’ deal into the bureaucracy and squeeze the funding out. Nothing happened and nothing was done. So we are left back at the end of the line, with that same old dangerous two lane highway and no real immediate prospects for change.

Here is another example. Both of the I-15 interchanges accessing Moapa and Moapa Valley are poorly designed and have long been in need of an update. Traffic coming off of the northbound exit 93 to Logandale/Overton finds itself suddenly in the middle of State Highway traffic before anyone even realizes it has happened. Yes, there is a yield sign posted there but it is too little too late. And even when one tries to yield, it is nearly impossible for the average human neck muscles to strain far enough to the left and backward, to allow the driver to see if traffic is coming across that overpass.

Likewise, the southbound exit 91 into Glendale is a disaster waiting to happen. Drivers coming down the ramp at highway speed have virtually no warning that they are about to be dumped into a strange little country crossroads with nothing but a single small stop sign regulating oncoming traffic.

Now it wouldn’t take much to find a simple fix to both of these dangerous situations. The cost would certainly be nowhere near what is being spent on the fancy roundabouts in Mesquite this year. Yet for decades many Moapa Valley residents have faced these very real perils on a daily basis and nothing has been done about them. No funding is made available from the bureaucrats for a fix. And, again, no elected officials are going to bat for us to get these issues up on the radar. So we just quietly keep putting our lives in danger every day.

Here is one more. There have been all kinds of plans in this community for an elaborate trail system. There is a dire need for such a system.

This community longs for safe trails. There are very few sidewalks along our roadways and virtually no designated street-side trails for walking, cycling or even horseback riding through town. School kids must often walk along dangerously narrow gravel roadsides to get to school and bus stops. Cyclists; some local and many coming from out of town to ride here; risk life and limb on our highways. Being required to navigate for many miles on little more than a three inch space of paved shoulder, they pray that they will not be mowed down by the ever-increasing trucking traffic that barrels through town night and day.

There are many trails planned. In fact the first phase, proposed to link Bowler Elementary School with Moapa Valley High School, was designed and even funded by the County. That was at least five years ago. And we are still waiting on that modest little trail to be built.

Coincidentally, a report on this very same project has appeared on the agenda of tonight’s Moapa Valley Town Advisory Board Meeting at 7 pm in the Overton Community Center. Hopefully that means construction will soon get underway.

But even if it does, this very limited trail route will be little consolation for folks who have waited so long for so little. While we have waited five years or more for phase one just to get started, the design and funding stages should have already been in the works for phases 2, 3 and 4.

But no one has stayed the course on these plans. The project has stalled out in the never ending bureaucratic vortex that is so common for Clark County. And no one has been there to go to bat for the Moapa Valley and hit the project out of that vortex. So here we remain a virtually trail-less community.

Now, in all of this complaining, we certainly don’t want to rain on Mesquite’s parade. The City’s strong position on regional commissions and its skillful lobbying in Carson City have yielded these well-earned benefits to that community. These projects will ensure rich economic growth to the City for a long time to come. Mesquite should be commended for its forethought and its determination.

But it still seems a pity that the Moapa Valley; with no local governing body, no lobbyists in Carson City, and apparently no elected strong arm to advocate our cause; has received so little equity in the State’s, or the region’s, transportation spending.

It is quite a contrast really: over $40 million sleighted for just the next couple of years in Mesquite versus virtually nothing in twenty years for Moapa Valley; and nothing on the horizon in the immediate future.

The fact is, our local highways, I-15 interchanges and trail systems have quietly waited at the back of the funding line for decades. We are still waiting at the back of that line. And unless something changes, it doesn’t look like we will be advancing anywhere near the front anytime soon. Perhaps never.