Departing from my up-at-the-crack-of-noon regimen, I made it to work one day last week before 8. Since the time I chose was unusual, I was surprised to see dozens and dozens of cars converging where the main road to Luna (Maximiliano) meets Hot Springs, and (sort of) meets a road that became quite popular once it got paved.
According to the map, the road that’s virtually a freeway is El Camino. Like most throughways in the area, it lacks identification. Some locals call it The El Camino Road, which means The The Road Road. Unless some adventurous soul wishes to go way north along the road to Los Vigiles, toward the Montezuma Castle, El Camino is the only option for those wishing to avoid a crowded Mills Avenue.
I noticed dozens of cars coming up the hill and turning right, headed toward the United World College and Montezuma; a number of them jogged left, then right, on their way to Luna Community College; and some took a left turn toward the former Medical Center and other sites on the boulevard. Similarly, a number of cars coming from Montezuma and El Porvenir, as well as Camp Luna residents, take The The Road Road as their shortcut to places east.
For the residents of Cinder Road, Old National Road, Sperry and Highland Drive, an east-west bypass already exists. Tired of traffic pileups on Mills, drivers opt for a different route, even if it is circuitous, laden with speed humps and stop signs.
Here’s a typical route for someone driving, for example from the Pizza Hut on Seventh to LCC: To avoid the three speed humps and a middle-of-the-block stop sign near Legion Elementary, drivers choose Lee Drive instead. It has only one stop sign, when it meets Eighth Street, and no humps. From there they dutifully observe the stop sign on Legion and either go straight on Eighth or left toward Memorial Middle School, or another left then a right onto Palo Verde, which hooks up with Cinder Road. It’s smooth going, whatever choice the driver makes, until reaching the Old National-El Camino junction, where the driver needs to negotiate two more turns.
A bypass, which would hook up highways 65 (Hot Springs) with 518 (the Mora highway) and ultimately I-25, near the airport exit, would do much to ease the congestion on Mills and assuredly speed things up for anyone needing quick east-west access.
For a resident of Camp Luna, for example, once he gets to the main stop sign, he faces a minimum of eight changes in direction and five stop signs before reaching Wal-Mart. A map of the greater Las Vegas area shows Mills not to be way north of the populated areas, as commonly believed, but more central. It’s a two-mile jaunt from LCC to Mills.
A group of merchants has opposed a proposed 4.2-mile east-west route that would give Las Vegas a much-need alternative to having Mills Avenue as the main route for people needing quick access to Grand and north I-25. Not surprisingly, some of the reasons folks oppose the bypass have to do with commerce: locating an east-west route a distance from the downtown businesses, they say, would take customers away. Preliminary proposals to erect an east-west bypass doubtless have met with quite strong opposition of the kind vocal local members of the public raised when, during a different mayoral administration years ago, there was talk of a “North Loop.” Several of those opposing the North Loop, at public hearings, said the loop would run right through their bedrooms.
Recently, some merchants have argued that a bypass will hurt their business, with motorists opting to head north. The West business district — where much of the opposition apparently derives — is unique to begin with: one doesn’t simply get off I-25 and magically find himself on the Plaza. One has to want to go there, and many thousands of people do just that every year.
Before Mills became really busy, few people used El Camino as a shortcut. Today, any resident of Old National Road — where it used to be safe for kids to ride their bikes — will tell you a bypass already exists, even if it changes direction every 300 feet. Out of necessity, the Old National, Cinder Road, El Camino junctions have become a bypass, even if that wasn’t in the original grand scheme of things. Assuredly a real bypass would make things easier for folks now residing in that area near the river.
Would a planned bypass hurt downtown business? Not a bit. What will hurt is the failure to plan for growth, most of which is going northward anyway. If we don’t provide suitable roads for our townspeople and for tourists as well, people might decide to bypass Las Vegas altogether.
And that would hurt us all.