Sunday, Dec. 24, 2017 | 2 a.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
View more of the Sun's opinion section
Congratulations, Sun readers. You helped our community take a step in the right direction last week.
It happened Wednesday, when Clark County Public Works staff pulled the plug on a proposed elevated expressway between McCarran International Airport and the Strip. To reduce driving time between the airport and the resort corridor, staff recommended an alternative approach that involves building new streets and improving existing ones.
In withdrawing the elevated expressway, staff members cited opposition from the public, UNLV and the Nevada Resort Association.
The public input included comments from more than 40 individuals who attended an open house for property owners along the proposed route or took advantage of an online form that was made available by the county.
In August, the Sun made readers aware of the online form and invited them to share their responses to the county with the paper. We then published excerpts from those letters, which were overwhelmingly in opposition to the project.
In fact, we received only one letter from a supporter of the elevated expressway, and that person would not confirm that he or she sent it.
Those who shared their views with the Sun offered a number of complaints about the plan, including that it would be an eyesore, would diminish values of nearby properties and was an outmoded and ineffective idea — so much so that many cities that have built elevated expressways have torn them down.
To their credit, county officials listened. They also deserve credit for engaging local residents by holding the open house and taking comments online.
On Wednesday, they received the commission’s go-ahead to explore the following alternatives:
• Widening and improving Koval Lane from Sands Avenue to Tropicana Avenue.
• Connecting Koval Lane and Paradise Road with a new street north of Tropicana.
• Extending Howard Hughes Parkway south, so that it would connect Tropicana to Flamingo Road.
• Improving the Tropicana and Swenson Street intersection.
With estimated costs at $178 million on the high end, the alternative plan would be cheaper than the elevated expressway, which was expected to cost at least $200 million.
Bravo to county staff members for going back to the drawing board. Their new plan will be much better for the community, for several reasons.
Perhaps the biggest is that elevated expressways have been proven to divide communities and place those who live near them at an extreme economic disadvantage. Seems no one wants to live or run a business near the towering superstructures, and the result are swaths of no-man’s-land where poverty and crime run rampant.
Given that some of the valley’s lowest-income neighborhoods lie just east of the proposed route of the expressway, building it would have put residents in those areas in an even deeper hole.
So it was a relief to see staff members go a different direction.
That said, while the new plan is an improvement, it doesn’t solve the problem with traffic congestion on the Strip.
For that, the solution isn’t building new roads or widening existing ones, it’s about getting cars off the streets. No matter how easy it is for drivers to get from the airport to the Strip, there’s congestion waiting for them on Las Vegas Boulevard because that street can’t handle any more cars — it’s already as wide as it can be.
The same applies to the opposite direction, as traffic backs up as it funnels into McCarran.
That’s why it’s imperative to build a light-rail system connecting McCarran to the Strip, and to expand the Las Vegas Monorail south to Mandalay Bay.
Creating low-cost, convenient transportation options for tourists and convention attendees will help maintain the high quality of the Las Vegas visitor experience. Remember, surveys show that more than half of the city’s visitors bounce around between five and 10 casinos while they’re here, so we need to make it quick and convenient for them to get up and down the Strip.
Sitting in a taxi, rental car or rideshare vehicle in bumper-to-bumper traffic isn’t going to keep people coming back.
Adding park-and-ride areas could also reduce traffic by giving casino workers an alternative to driving their own cars to the resorts where they’re employed.
With an estimated price tag of at least $600 million, light rail isn’t a cheap fix. But given that our streets are at capacity while our population and visitor numbers are growing, there’s no longer such a thing as a cheap fix.
Now that the elevated expressway is behind us, the next step for local officials is to dive in on light rail.
