Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for a Proposed Highway Project in Clark County, Nevada

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Highway Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FHWA-2024-0018]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for a Proposed Highway Project in Clark County, Nevada</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Department of Transportation (USDOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of Intent to prepare an environmental impact statement. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> FHWA and Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) are issuing this Notice of Intent (NOI) to solicit comments and advise the public, agencies, and stakeholders that FHWA will prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for transportation improvements to a section of Interstate 11 (I-11)/U.S. Highway 95 (US 95)/U.S. Highway 93 (US 93) in the City of Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada. The project is referred to as the Downtown Access Project. This NOI contains a summary of information as required in the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations for implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This NOI should be reviewed together with the Additional Project Information document, which contains additional important details about the proposed project. Persons and agencies who may be interested in or affected by the proposed project are encouraged to comment on the information in this NOI and the Additional Project Information document. All comments received in response to this NOI will be considered and any information presented herein, including the preliminary purpose and need, preliminary alternatives, and identified impacts, may be revised in consideration of the comments. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on the NOI and/or the Additional Project Information document must be received on or before April 22, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> This NOI and the Additional Project Information document are available in Docket No. FHWA-2024-0018, which is available at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> and on the project website located at <E T="03">www.ndotdap.com</E> under the “Environmental” tab. Additional Project Information document will also be mailed upon request. All interested parties are invited to submit comments on the NOI using any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Website:</E> For access to the documents, go to the Federal eRulemaking Portal located at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> or the project website located at <E T="03">www.ndotdap.com</E> under the “Environmental” tab. Follow the online instructions for submitting comments at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> • <E T="03">Phone:</E> Abdelmoez Abdalla at (775) 687-1231 or Ryan Wheeler at (702) 278-3391. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> FHWA Nevada Division, 705 N Plaza, Suite 220, Carson City, NV 89701, Attention: Abdelmoez Abdalla; or Nevada Department of Transportation, 123 E Washington Ave., Las Vegas, NV 89101, Attention: Ryan Wheeler. • <E T="03">Email address: abdelmoez.abdalla@dot.gov</E> or <E T="03">rwheeler@dot.nv.gov.</E> • <E T="03">Project email address: info@ndotdap.com.</E> All submissions should include the agency name and the docket number that appears in this NOI. All comments received will be posted without change on <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. The Draft EIS will include a summary of the comments received. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For further information and/or to be placed on the project mailing list, contact Abdelmoez Abdalla, Environmental Program Manager, FHWA Nevada Division, 705 N Plaza, Suite 220, Carson City, NV 89701; (775) 687-1231, <E T="03">abdelmoez.abdalla@dot.gov;</E> or Ryan Wheeler, Senior Project Manager, Nevada Department of Transportation, 123 E Washington Ave., Las Vegas, NV 89101; (702) 278-3391, <E T="03">rwheeler@dot.nv.gov.</E> Persons interested in receiving project information can also use the project email address to be added to the project mailing list. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> FHWA and NDOT are committed to public involvement for this project. All public comments received in response to this NOI will be considered and potential revisions will be made to the information presented herein as appropriate. FHWA, as the lead Federal Agency, and NDOT, as the lead State agency and project sponsor, are preparing an EIS to evaluate transportation solutions on I-11/US 95/US 93  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> in the City of Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada in accordance with NEPA, as amended (42 United States Code [U.S.C.] 4321, <E T="03">et seq.</E> ); 23 U.S.C. 139, CEQ regulations for implementing NEPA (40 Code of Regulations [CFR] 1500-1508); FHWA regulations implementing NEPA (23 CFR 771.101-771.139, 23 CFR part 772, and 23 CFR part 774); and applicable Federal, State, and local laws and regulations. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Interstate 11 (I-11) was formerly signed as Interstate 515 (I-515). </FTNT> The EIS will evaluate the environmental effects of all reasonable project alternatives and determine the potential impacts to social, economic, natural, and physical environmental resources associated with these alternatives. The project team and agencies will work together to identify and mitigate any potentially significant impacts through the NEPA process. FHWA will consider, screen, and carry forward all reasonable alternatives for a detailed analysis in the Draft EIS based on their ability to address the project's purpose and need while minimizing adverse impacts to the natural and human environment. To ensure that a full range of issues are addressed in the EIS and potential issues are identified, comments and suggestions are invited from all interested parties. FHWA requests comments on the purpose and need statement, project alternatives and impacts, and the identification of any relevant information, studies, or analyses of any kind concerning impacts to the quality of the natural and human environment. The purpose of this request is to bring relevant comments, information, and analyses to the attention of FHWA and NDOT as early in the process as possible, to enable the agency to make maximum use of this information in the decision-making process. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Purpose and Need for the Proposed Action</HD> The purpose of the project is to address aging infrastructure, safety, and congestion along I-11/US 95/US 93 between Rancho Drive and Mojave Road in Las Vegas to increase the efficiency of the movement of people, goods, and services on the freeway. Improvements are necessary to address the following: (1) aging bridges; (2) closely spaced ramps that create short merge and weave distances; and (3) unacceptable congestion caused by increased traffic volumes on a freeway structure that has never been widened in a city that has grown 1,000 percent since I-11/US 95/US 93 was opened to traffic in 1968. In addition to the needs, several project goals were identified to revitalize and reconnect the community. These are: (1) improve neighborhood multimodal mobility; (2) reconnect neighborhoods; (3) enhance public health and wellness; (4) improve human and natural environment; (5) improve infrastructure resiliency; and (6) support economic growth. These reflect topics important to the public, stakeholders, and agencies. The purpose and need statement, and project goals may be revised based on the comments received during the comment period for this NOI. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Description of the Proposed Action and Alternatives the EIS Will Consider</HD> Three alternatives were initially developed, evaluated, and then presented to the public at a public information meeting in January 2022: Alternative 1 was a South Alternative that widened and shifted I-11/US 95/US 93 to the south; Alternative 2 was a North Alternative that widened and shifted I-11/US 95/US 93 to the north; and Alternative 3 was a Recessed Alternative in which I-11/US 95/US 93 was widened and shifted north of the existing freeway and placed below ground in an open trench for approximately 1 mile. In addition, Alternative 4 is the No Build Alternative. These alternatives included HOV lanes as well as HOV-only interchanges at Maryland Parkway and City Parkway. Preliminary impacts were identified for the alternatives and presented at the public meeting in January 2022. In spring 2022, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) expressed concerns due to the high number of residential displacements in an environmental justice community. FHWA shared these concerns. EPA and FHWA asked NDOT to revise the alternatives to reduce impacts and to solicit more community input to better understand what the community would like to see in a reconstructed freeway (see further discussion in Description of the Public Scoping Process, later in this document). As a result of this effort, Alternatives 1, 2, and 3 (South, North, and Recessed Alternatives), as initially developed, were dismissed from further consideration due to their community impacts ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the large number of displacements in the environmental justice community) and NDOT developed Alternatives 5, 6, 7, and 8. NDOT presented these four alternatives, along with the No Build Alternative, at a public meeting in August 2023. Based on feedback from the public meeting, input from FHWA, and because of its larger footprint and high number of potential displacements, as well as the higher cost, Alternative 8 (Recessed with No HOV Interchanges) was dismissed from further consideration. Other factors in NDOT's decision to dismiss Alternative 8 from further consideration were that it would be more complex and riskier to build than Alternatives 5, 6, an ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 25k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━