NV 171

[Max Rockatansky]

Nevada State Route 171 is an 0.685-mile unsigned State Highway located in unincorporated in Paradise of Clark County.  Nevada State Route 171 begins at the southern portal of the Harry Reid International Airport tunnel and terminates at Interstate 215.  Nevada State Route 171 is largely carried as an extension of Paradise Road completed in 1994. 

https://www.gribblenation.org/2023/06/nevada-state-route-171.html

[The Ghostbuster]

NV 171 likely isn't signposted since the highway is only 0.685 miles long. Personally, I think 171 should have had its northern terminus at NV 593, instead of the NV 562 interchange.

[roadfro]

SR 171 is interesting for a couple reasons:

1) Up until NDOT assumed control of Summerlin Pkwy recently, it was the only freeway-grade facility inventoried as a state route under NDOT's maintenance.

2) The last several NDOT State Maintained Highways books (including the current 2023 edition) note that SR 171 is only maintained by NDOT, and ownership resides with Clark County. That is seemingly a unique arrangement (it's one of the few instances where the SMH book makes this distinction).

NV 171 likely isn't signposted since the highway is only 0.685 miles long. Personally, I think 171 should have had its northern terminus at NV 593, instead of the NV 562 interchange.

That wouldn't have happened knowing that a lot of the roadway network on the north end of the tunnels is under control of either Clark County Public Works or Clark County Department of Aviation, due to the airport access.

Also, NDOT has been trying to offload ownership and maintenance of urban arterial roadways wherever they can for years, especially in cases where there's planned redevelopment, potential for road diets or roadway reconfigurations, etc. In many cases, the cities/counties are eager for this as well, because removing NDOT ownership from a local arterial removes one layer of red tape (an example was Las Vegas Blvd being owned by NDOT but Clark County maintaining the median landscaping, and the county needing to get encroachment permits from NDOT to do landscape work). NDOT would rather control the larger regional roadways in the urban areas. A good amount of jurisdictional swaps took place in the Las Vegas area a few years ago, which led to NDOT finally taking over all of I-215 and Summerlin Pkwy from the county and city, respectively, in exchange for offloading portions of several state routes to these entities.

All that to say that even in the mid-1990s, NDOT wasn't interested in adding Paradise/Swenson to their network to connect the SR 171 designation to the other side of the airport (especially when they didn't own it). I'm not even sure that NDOT or CCPW/CC Aviation wanted it well known that the bypass even existed since the primary reason SR 171 & the airport tunnels were built was for airport access (using the airport tunnel as a commuter route bypassing the airport wasn't particularly well known/utilized until probably the early 2000s).