New $22.6 Million Sunset Road Bridge Opens

Las Vegas cross-town traffic just improved thanks to a newly opened east-west bridge. Sunset Road now travels over Interstate-15 between Valley View and Las Vegas boulevards. The $22.6 million four-span bridge has four travel and two turning lanes. The 550-ft-long by 60-ft-wide structure required 1,200 tons of steel to complete. The crossing opened to traffic on January 13. Las Vegas Paving Corp. is the design-build general contractor, with Jacobs as structural engineer. Construction required placing 2,050 cu yards of concrete and 29,500-sq-ft of precast walls, as well as 11,000 tons of asphalt for the new roadway.

The Sunset Road Bridge is the first of many major milestones included in the $246.5 million I-15 South widening project from Tropicana Avenue to just south of Silverado Ranch Boulevard. It marks the state’s largest road job yet. The Las Vegas Convention Visitors Authority is providing $250 million in bond-backed financing, with the debt being retired through hotel room taxes. The multi-year, multi-faceted project provides a much need lift to Southern Nevada’s sagging construction industry.

“This is an investment in the economy that creates jobs and improves east-west mobility,” says deputy state transportation director Rudy Malfabon.

The design-build project will employ 70 designers and 300 people during the height of building activity. The project will widen the freeway, add collector-distributor roads and redesign five interchanges. Other work calls for 26 new bridge segments, 35 retaining walls and 1.5 miles of sound walls, plus installation of an intelligent messaging system. The job additionally entails extensive regionally themed aesthetics on bridges, and retaining and sound walls, with drought tolerant landscaping, colorful graphics and Cor-Ten steel sculptures.

The I-15 South widening is scheduled to finish in March 2012.