Taking Nevada

Road block. Speed bump. Bump in the road. Flashing yellow light. Detour. One of those odd European road signals that you can’t really fathom when you’re travelling, but you hope you’re not breaking the law.

Pick your transportation pun, but hot on the heels of approval of Alternative 2 of the full two-decade neverending Spaghetti Bowl Project …(The Olive Garden Project, if you will…. and since this is my blog, we shall indeed) …

So, hot on the heels of federal approval of the Olive Garden Project, the Spaghetti Bowl Xpress project, which was separate but interrelated, has hit a snag.

As ably reported by the Reno Gazette-Journal, NDOT’s ambitious “design-build” request for proposals has not garnered any qualifying proposals. The proposals either came in significantly over-budget, or met the budget by eliminating large pieces of necessary infrastructure. As a result, NDOT will revert to the traditional “design-bid-build” approach, leading to dismay from local politicos.

I am curious whether the delay on Spaghetti Bowl Xpress will push it into parallel tracking with the Olive Garden Project, which would seem to sort of eliminate the original advantage of launching the smaller project first. I am very bullish that at the end of the day (i.e. end of the 2030s) the Spaghetti Bowl will be rebuilt and improved. It is fairly common for massive public projects such as this to have fits and starts throughout the process. Reno and Sparks truly do need a massive overhaul of the Spaghetti Bowl, and soon. Further, delays and revisions create a level of uncertainty that is less than ideal of both public and private planning.

The stated reason for the overage in bid prices, by the way, was the “reliance on preliminary plans instead of a complete final design.” If I understand that correctly, the problem with “design-build” was… uncertainty.

Personally, however, I blame the issues on the failure to spell Express correctly.

Back to the drawing board.