Pedestrians are wild card in planning for Bellagio traffic

It's not an impossible task to determine the amount of traffic the opening of the Bellagio hotel-casino will generate on the Strip and Flamingo Road.

In fact, that's the easy part. Road improvements are made based on studies conducted during peak traffic hours. Engineers look at traffic flows and they count how many cars turn left, turn right or go straight.

They plug the number of hotel rooms and square footage of the building into their fine-tuned formula and come up with an estimate on the additional traffic the megaresort will cause on nearby roads.

It's the pedestrians that are unpredictable.

The addition of two eastbound lanes to Flamingo Road adjacent to Bellagio, studies show, should keep vehicles traveling through the Las Vegas Boulevard intersection at a smooth pace.

"But that is assuming people don't jaywalk and that is absolutely not the case here," said John Toth, chief of development services for Clark County. "It's incredible how detrimental pedestrians are to traffic. They can shut down a whole intersection."

Bellagio representatives and county officials have done what they can to prepare for tonight's opening.

Two lanes were added to the northbound Interstate 15 off-ramp leading to Flamingo. Those lanes continue east to the Strip, where motorists can turn right and be guided into Bellagio's front entrance.

Motorists can also enter Bellagio on the north side using its Porte-Cochere entrance, which is controlled by a new traffic signal. Another traffic signal was added to Las Vegas Boulevard at Bellagio Drive.

A fourth traffic lane was added to the Strip from Flamingo to Harmon Avenue. At Harmon, it will connect with a lane New York-New York and Monte Carlo built that leads to Tropicana Boulevard.

"I'm sure there will be a honeymoon period when all the locals are trying to get down there," Toth said. "There may be a greater influx of traffic than there will be two months from now."

Two Bellagio-built pedestrian bridges across Flamingo and the Strip are expected to offer some relief to the congestion at the intersection. Those bridges, however, won't open until late Friday or early Saturday.

Clark County Public Works Director Bobby Shelton said when New York-New York opened, excited visitors crammed onto pedestrian bridges. There was no way to get on or off the span except to wait.

"It causes a safety hazard having that many people on a bridge," Shelton said. "If you don't let people on them, you don't have that problem."

The county hopes to soon begin building pedestrian bridges linking Bally's hotel-casino to Barbary Coast and Barbary Coast to Caesars Palace. When all four bridges are in place, about 40 percent more traffic will get through the intersection per green light, Toth said.

Until the pedestrian overcrossings are completed, pedestrians are bound to block turn-lanes.

"You wouldn't just step out into an eight-lane street in any other city," Toth said. "Only here."

A Clark County-subsidized study shows 57,600 cars travel through the Flamingo Road-Las Vegas Boulevard intersection a day. About 41,560 vehicles use Harmon Avenue each day.

Shelton said public works officials anticipate 11,157 vehicles going into Bellagio through its main entrance on the Strip and 14,728 motorists a day will leave using that driveway.

About 2,943 vehicles will enter through the Porte-Cochere entrance on the north side and 2,643 motorists will leave using that exit. Finally, some 1,643 people -- mostly construction workers and Bellagio employees -- will enter through the Harmon Avenue driveway and 1,414 will exit that way.

Shelton emphasized that not all 11,000-plus motorists entering Bellagio can be tacked onto the Strip traffic count. He said an unknown percentage of motorists are people who are on the Strip anyway and decide to turn into Bellagio.

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