NDOT: Highway 50A widening could be completed by July

The final phase of construction that will complete the widening of U.S. Highway 50A from Leeteville Junction to Jersey Lane, making the entire stretch of road between Fallon and Fernley a four-lane highway, is scheduled to be completed by July, according to the Nevada Department of Transportation.

Don Henley, project engineer for Reno-based Road and Highway Builders, said the project is about 75 percent complete.

The bid for the final phase of the project was awarded to Road and Highway Builders, LLC in December 2006 for $30 million.

Henley said the company is currently concentrating on building the rail overpass, adding a good portion of the asphalt being used to make Highway 50A a four-lane roadway has been poured.

He could not estimate when the project would be done, adding weather will determine how fast the company can work.

Nevada Department of Transportation Public Information Officer Scott Magruder said he thinks the project will be completed by July.

He said Road and Highway Builders was given 265 working days to complete the project, and added bad weather does not count against those days.

"Weather can play a factor," he said, adding NDOT usually plans on 20 to 22 working days per month on its projects.

The NDOT spokesman said the work currently being done has been slowed by the cold weather as well as the earthwork needing to be done.

"They are definitely making progress," he said. "They still have seven to eight months to (finish)."

Magruder said the roadway, when completed, will be a four-lane divided highway.

He said the reason NDOT undertook this project was the number of fatalities on the stretch of roadway.

From 1996 to 2001, he said, there were six collisions on Highway 50A resulting in 10 fatalities.

Figures from the Nevada Highway Patrol also revealed that of the 12 fatal crashes in Churchill County in the last 21 months, nine were on either Highway 50 or Highway 50A.

Magruder said the current work is the culmination of a $75 million, five-phase project that began several years ago.

The massive project began in December 2005, he said.

The first phase improved the section from Fernley to the Churchill County line. Work in Fernley included a roundabout and construction of a bridge over railroad tracks on U.S. Highway 95A, just north of the roundabout.