The opening date for the Carson City freeway has been moved up, from mid-April to mid-February. All the work has been proceeding ahead of schedule (despite the freeway itself being a couple of decades late). Which means that if everything comes together just right, we could be driving on our little half-highway as soon as a month from now.

It’s going to be a welcome addition to Carson City, but since this is just Phase One of the project, and it only stretches halfway across town, we’re not going to get the full benefit of the freeway just yet. It will definitely help folks that live in East Carson get to Reno. It’s expected to shave a good ten minutes off that drive. But it does nothing to help anyone from South Carson, or from Douglas County, or to get all that highway traffic off of Carson Street. For that we’ll have to wait until 2010 when the whole thing is done.