Traffic on Highway 50 through Dayton Valley will look more like Carson Street than the loneliest road in America unless another route is found.
Dayton Valley residents will be able to get a glimpse at future routes around the valley 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Lyon County Utilities Building, 34 Lakes Blvd.
"We know we have a problem," said Dayton Regional Advisory Council chairwoman Barbara Peck. "We can't put all those cars on Highway 50. It is difficult to approve requests for future development when we don't know what the traffic patterns are going to be."
Development patterns along Highway 50 resemble those along Highway 395 through Carson City, according to Western Nevada Development District planning director Bill Cadwallader.
"Just as Carson City is looking at other streets that can provide north-south routes, we are looking at east-west routes for Dayton," Cadwallader said. "The two places have a similar sort of development plan. We want to apply some planning tools to the effort."
The development district has created a dozen maps to show existing and proposed development between the mountains.
"Somewhere between the two, we are looking at whether we can fit in a road," he said. "We want to recognize the issues and problems that Carson City has had and find a solution for Dayton earlier in the development cycle."
Three sets of maps are set up in portable document format readable by Adobe Acrobat and will be available at the district's Web site, www.wndd.org in the near future.
"Our intent is to make these maps available to everyone, so people can look at them and see what the issues are and come forward with their comments," Cadwallader said.
He warned that there is no easy solution to Dayton's future traffic woes.
"Anything that is done will be a compromise and the public needs to understand what some of the compromises are," he said.
Peck invited residents to attend Wednesday's meeting to see the maps and offer opinions.
"We are asking for community input in developing a route to get traffic in the valley off Highway 50," she said. "We need another route and now is the time to do it before all the development gets in place."
Contact Kurt Hildebrand at hildebrand@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1215.
