Spaghetti Bowl (Las Vegas)
| Spaghetti Bowl | |
|---|---|
Southbound US 95 entering the Spaghetti Bowl
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| Location | |
| Las Vegas, Nevada | |
| Coordinates: | 36°10′27″N 115°09′20″W / 36.174119°N 115.155644°W |
| Roads at junction: |
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| Construction | |
| Type: | interchange |
| Constructed: | 1960s, 1999-2000 |
| Opened: | 1968 |
| Maintained by: | Nevada DOT |
The Spaghetti Bowl is the colloquial name for a freeway interchange near downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. It is the system interchange between Interstate 15, Interstate 515, U.S. Route 93 and U.S. Route 95, which also includes a service interchange with Martin Luther King Boulevard.
The interchange, which was substantially rebuilt between 1999 and 2000, carries more than 300,000 cars and trucks per day.
The original Spaghetti Bowl was constructed in the mid 1960s by Kiewit Corporation, and was completed by 1968. Upon completion, the interchange connected I-15 to the new, cross-town Las Vegas Expressway. That highway, which carried US 95 (relocated from Bonanza Road) and was later renamed in honor of Oran K. Gragson, served as a mile-long spur to Las Vegas Boulevard in downtown Las Vegas on the east, and eventually served as a new bypass of Rancho Drive for US 95 traffic to the west and north.
Between 1982 and 1994, the US 95 freeway was extended to the east (concurrent with US 93) past downtown and then southeast toward Henderson, Nevada, eventually being co-designated as I-515. Also in the 1980s, new interchanges, including one with a new feeder freeway, the Summerlin Parkway, were constructed along the US 95 Gragson Freeway to the west and northwest of the Spaghetti Bowl. The increased traffic on the cross-town freeway left the I-15 interchange, with its two loop ramps, several closely spaced ramps and no ramp wider than one lane, totally inadequate; it had been designed to carry only about 60,000 vehicles a day.
In the late 1990s, NDOT began a reconstruction project at the interchange, with new, wider ramps and elimination of the loops. By November 1999, ramps had been built and opened to provide access in all directions to and from nearby Martin Luther King Boulevard (except for an onramp to US 95 north), which had only partial access in the prior configuration. The overall project was completed in August 2000 with the opening of the new flyovers and other reconfigured freeway-to-freeway ramps.
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