Back Row: John Penuelas, Bill Ortiz, Ron Floth, Maggie Saunders, Nadia Fulkerson, Dorothy Pewitt, Erin Breen.
Last September, the Southern Nevada Pedestrian Safety Task Force decided it was time to have a conversation about safety along Boulder Highway (SR 582).
The bottom line is countless lives have been lost crossing the street. In the past five years there have been 1,700 crashes, 30 pedestrian deaths and 8 percent of the total fatalities for Clark County as a whole—an amount that warrants change.
On January 27, nearly 70 stakeholders gathered for the Boulder Highway Coalition day-long summit. Engineers, planners, law enforcement, elected officials and advocates came to the table to discuss ways to improve Boulder Highway. Many ideas were discussed at the day long summit, culminating in both short- and long-term goals and plans for the corridor.
Boulder Highway is a state route, and NDOT has identified several short-term projects which will help jump start the new Boulder Highway.
Short-Term Goals
- Utilize pedestrian safety zone law to enhance safety message
- Increase enforcement of actions putting lives in jeopardy
- Increase penalties for violations
- Enhance pedestrian lighting and add median lighting corridor wide
- Using delineators, take away inside travel lanes to reduce distance for crossing, Make street safer and determine feasibility of long-term plan
- Video public service announcements on busses about safe crossing in English and Spanish
- Broaden education efforts to include area businesses, schools, weekly housing facilities and developers as partners to deliver safety message
- Increase awareness of life’s fragility by using alert system on cell phones to notify residents of every road fatality community-wide
Long-Term Goals
- Redesign Boulder Highway using a complete streets approach:
- Reduce and narrow travel lanes
- Add wider sidewalks and protected bike lanes
- Add more crosswalks and shorten crossing distances at intersections
- Add rapid flashing beacon signals to all crosswalks
- Add art and landscaping to support calming effect and enhance beauty
- Reduce speed limit to 35 mph
- Consider alternative intersections such as roundabouts
- Working with neighborhoods, rename Boulder Highway to remove “highway” to reflect revised character of corridor
- Adopt smart growth strategies to assure land use and zoning work for the betterment of the area
