Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) officials are espousing the benefits of the state’s second longest bridge coming online.
The 2,635-foot-long flyover connects northbound U.S. Highway 95 with the westbound 215 Beltway in northwest Las Vegas. The 75-foot-tall by 39-foot-wide bridge is a box girder type structure built from cast-in-place post-tensioned concrete.
Measuring the equivalent of seven football fields laid end-to-end, the structure would provide two travel lanes linking north-to-west freeway traffic and feature a flyover ramp enabling direct freeway-to-freeway travel to bolster efficiency and safety.
The completed effort eliminates the stop-and-go surface street travel that previously required sitting through traffic signals to make a freeway connection, per NDOT. The 13-span structure is connected by four frames and reinforced with three million pounds of steel rebar or enough iron to build 45 Sherman tanks.
The endeavor took 14,300 cubic yards of concrete delivered by 1,500 cement mixer truck trips to complete, with officials equating that to enough concrete to fill 4.5 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
The half-mile-long northwest connector is part of the $73 million Centennial Bowl interchange project that broke ground in January 2019. The project also involves building a second, smaller interchange bridge measuring 30-foot-tall by 35 feet wide.