Flamingo Road congestion beyond obscene

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Flamingo Road is one of the oldest and busiest east-west arterials that guides tourists, cabbies and locals across Las Vegas Boulevard. Since Harrah’s Entertainment embarked on a $60 million endeavor to bury power lines, the increasingly common name for Flamingo has become #$%@# Road.

Some locals call the thoroughfare Flaming-O. And lately, that “O” could stand for any number of things.

Obscene. That is an appropriate description of eastbound traffic traveling across the Strip during the last year as Wilson Construction crews began gouging the earth and digging trenches to sink nearly a mile’s worth of power lines between Interstate 15 and Koval Lane. During any time of day or evening, bumper-to-bumper traffic inching eastbound can be seen backed up to the Rio hotel-casino.

Obscene also describes the language cabbies use when they call my line and ask — we’ll clean this up — “What the heck is going on and when in tarnation will Flamingo be back to normal?”

Obstruction. As in obstructing views and future expansion. Harrah’s plan to bury power lines on the north side of Flamingo has been on the table for two decades. The lines and giant transmission poles aren’t exactly the attractions tourists look for when deciding where to stay. Most important, the above-ground utilities obstruct future expansion of Harrah’s properties. Harrah’s owns casinos on three of the four corners of the Flamingo-Las Vegas Boulevard intersection.

Obsolete. Those power lines and massive towers are rarely seen on major roads anymore. But the utility lines on Flamingo were installed in the early 1960s, when underground utilities were not an option.

Obstacles. Orange cones and barrels have littered the stretch of Flamingo between I-15 and Koval for months. It’s at its worst at Las Vegas Boulevard, where heavy traffic in the heart of the resort corridor has been forced into two lanes, sometimes one.

Restricting lanes helps protect workers and motorists as massive vaults are placed underground and cables are pulled through and spliced. In this case, workers are truly underground. Trust me, I ducked into a manhole and saw them.

Crews have had their own obstacles as well.

Steven Taylor, project manager for Wilson, has performed utility work in cities across the country, but Las Vegas is a different beast.

“The magnitude of traffic here is greater than any of those other cities,” Taylor said. “Flamingo has major traffic, both vehicle and pedestrian, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That’s very much not the situation in other metro areas.”

Overkill. Heavy equipment sits in the median and blocks turn lanes when no workers are present during the day. This, Taylor said, is not overkill. It’s important to have that equipment in place so workers can immediately start the job during nighttime construction hours. The hours it would take to maneuver the equipment into place every night and remove it each morning would delay the project.

“It lets us get in and out much faster than if we have to do that each night,” Taylor said. “It does make you wonder when you look at it sitting there and nobody is working. It’s there for nighttime work.”

Lately crews have been working daytime hours as they guide massive cables — massive meaning 22 pounds a foot — from I-15 to Koval. That process is done below energized wires, making this phase dangerous to do at night.

Orneriness. Utility crews get it: This is a royal pain to anyone, which is almost everyone, who must use Flamingo. There are very few east-west arterials that cross the Strip.

According to one crew member, a motorist tried to run down a flagger not once, but twice. Las Vegas police were summoned.

“We do get people hollering at us as they drive by; they see us there and we’re sort of a natural target,” Taylor said. “They don’t throw things at us, but occasionally we’ll get some honking and shouting.”

Outreach. As frustrating as it might be, you have to give Harrah’s some credit for hiring the Reilly Group, a public relations firm, to provide weekly updates on lane closures and warnings of excessive congestion. Most companies that oversee road projects don’t bother giving the public a heads up.

Obviously the project could have been completed much faster if Flamingo was closed, but clearly that wasn’t an option.

“Given this is kind of the heart of everything, it’s been quite challenging,” said Debi Puccinelli of the Reilly Group. “If we shut the whole thing down, it would be a completely different story.”

Over. That’s what this project nearly is. Crews expect to have it wrapped up by summer.

If you have a question, tip or tirade, call Adrienne Packer at 702-387-2904, or send an e-mail to roadwarrior@reviewjournal
.com. Please include your phone number.