The future of Highway 50

The Nevada Department of Transportation today holds the first two in a series of 18 public meetings on the future of Highway 50 East from the Carson City line to Leetville Junction.

"We're trying to take a proactive approach," said Dennis Taylor, chief of the Program Development Division.

He said the $500,000 study will deal with everything from access to the highway and speed limits to potential alternative routes.

"We recognize major development is beginning to take place along the U.S. 50 corridor. We don't want to wait until we have so much development, so much traffic on that corridor that we can't do anything," he said.

He said the goal is to produce a Highway 50 corridor study report by 2007 that will guide development so that it can serve the residential and commercial growth in the area.

Taylor said there have already been several meetings with local governments in the area to discuss the study. Today's meetings in Silver Springs at noon and in Dayton at 5 p.m. are the first public meetings.

"Whatever is ultimately decided is going to be decided collectively among the counties, the citizens and NDOT," he said. "That's incredibly important to us because there has been the impression in the past that NDOT does what NDOT does and that's not the case at all."

He said the plan will be a blueprint for handling development of the highway in the future but that it won't be etched in stone.

"Plans are a dynamic document," he said. "At the rate we're growing, will that plan suffice for long? No, probably not because things change and we'll have to revise it."

But he said it will provide a base from which to work.

n Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750.