Completion of the Carson City bypass has become the subject of campaign ads in the Assembly District 40 race, but budget constraints could mean there's a long road before the project is finished.
Cheryl Lau, the Republican nominee for District 40 challenging incumbent Democrat Bonnie Parnell, has run television commercials promising to help finish the partially-completed project and says on her campaign Web site that she wants to "improve our transportation infrastructure that seems to be moving along far too slowly."
"I'm passionate about this because we need to get it done," said Lau, who has been Nevada Secretary of State and a legal researcher at the Nevada Department of Transportation.
Parnell said she has worked to keep the Carson bypass a priority for the state by telling leaders that it is "something we can't put on the back burner at anytime."
Even road maintenance has become a concern because of state funding shortfalls, however, she said, and there are other important needs throughout the state.
"It's tough," she said.
The transportation department started taking bids on the first part of the project in 1999 and the most recent $45 million section running to Fairview Drive is scheduled to be done next summer.
The final part of the project connecting the U.S. 395 bypass with Highway 50 at the base of Spooner Summit leading to Lake Tahoe has been delayed until 2014 because of a lack of state funds.
But Scott Magruder, a representative with the transportation department, said the bypass is still one of the "top priorities" for transportation and the department is working on designing and acquiring land for the $160 million to $180 million phase.
Street widening near the intersection of Highway 50 and the bypass has been recently finished, he said.
Carson City's government has also been negotiating with the state to help finish the project.
It has given about $14 million for the bypass through a gas tax, said Supervisor Shelly Aldean, but suspended paying it to the state so those funds can go to road construction at the intersection of Fairview Drive and Carson Street.
Because of the state's delay in the project, "further payment (of the tax to the state) is subject to negotiation," said Aldean, who is head of the city regional transportation commission.
What more the city or its assembly representative can do to speed up work on the last phase of the bypass besides the hard work it is already doing isn't clear, however, she said, because of demands from Southern Nevada for road projects.
Mark Amodei, a Republican state senator from the Capital District, said the amount of demands for transportation funds throughout the state is "absolutely crushing."
The projects chosen to be priorities, further, aren't even decided by the Legislature, but by the transportation board of directors, he said.
What a politician can do, he said, is make sure the board knows that the bypass should continue to be a priority by making points like how much Carson City has contributed to the project.
- Contact reporter Dave Frank at dfrank@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1212.