Where is the money?

If things go as expected, the interchange proposed to be built at highways 50 and 395 by 2010 will be overwhelmed by traffic in 2030.

The intersection will have the importance of the spaghetti bowl in Reno by that time, serving an estimated quarter million people between Carson City, Douglas and Lyon counties, according to the Nevada Demographer's Office.

On Thursday Valley residents will get an opportunity to examine plans to get those people from one place to another along Highway 395.

What they won't get to see is where the money will come from to do all this work.

With five overpasses and at least three exchanges in the study, the cost of improving Highway 395 won't quite be that of the Carson City bypass in today's dollars.

But that work won't be done today, or tomorrow or even in the next decade.

And the state's plan hinges on completion of Douglas County's transportation plan, and those hinges are pretty rusty.

Cost of completion of county's transportation plan was $7.1 million, but that was back when the parking garage was only going to cost the county $4.3 million.

And that's the point. No matter how much we plan for the future, none of it matters unless that plan includes funding.