Thursday, Dec. 19, 2019 | 2 a.m.
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Las Vegas is expected to reach a milestone today, with McCarran International Airport scheduled to announce this afternoon that it has served a record 50 million passengers this year.
It’s a whopper of a number, and a testament to the power of our city’s attractiveness to visitors from all over the globe. It’s a reason for great pride and optimism among local residents.
But it should also serve as an urgent call to action. As our visitor numbers continue to ratchet up, it’s critical for this community to make it easier for people to flow from McCarran through our resort corridor.
Las Vegas needs a light rail system.
This long-overdue improvement is integral to maintaining the luster of our visitor experience, which is at the heart of our marketing message and a key to keeping tourists coming back. It also would improve the lives of local residents, including by providing Strip workers with an inexpensive and convenient way to get to and from work in the resort corridor.
Vacationers want carefree fun when they come to Las Vegas, and conventiongoers want convenience as they go about their business. That being the case, traffic congestion is like kryptonite for the city. Spending hours inching around in traffic is nobody’s idea of a good time, and is likely to prompt visitors to look elsewhere when booking future trips or picking convention sites.
Yet on far too regular of a basis, that’s exactly what visitors experience on the Strip. That’s because Las Vegas Boulevard has reached the capacity of cars it can carry, even as our tourism numbers escalate and our population grows. So the street gets clogged during peak hours.
And now, congestion on the boulevard is going to get much worse. Last month, work began on a five-year road improvement project that will span the entire length of the Strip and beyond, from Sahara Avenue to the 215 Beltway. The first of the project’s five phases got under way with work on a stretch between Sahara and Spring Mountain Road, triggering lane closures.
The project will include repaving the surface of Las Vegas Boulevard, replacing water lines, improving pedestrian walkways and upgrading the technology of the traffic control system. The total cost of the project has yet to be revealed, but the price tag for the first portion is $47.7 million.
Don’t expect the overhaul to eliminate congestion, though. Although it involves creating one lane in select areas, it’s not a fix-all. The more people come to Las Vegas and the more cars flow onto the boulevard, the more crowded it’s going to get. Period.
But that’s where light rail would have a transformational effect. The more people who rode rail, the fewer cars there would be on the streets. Meanwhile, rail would allow travelers to zip between the airport and their destinations, then roll up and down the Strip quickly and conveniently while enjoying the lights and sights of Las Vegas.
Considering that the average tourist stays three or four nights and that 56% stop into at least five resort properties while they’re here, according to the most recent visitors survey by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, light rail would be a boon for them.
Unfortunately, though, community leaders haven’t been able to get rail off the ground. A proposal to build a system connecting Maryland Parkway with downtown and the medical district fell short this year when the board of the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada rejected it in favor of a bus rapid transit system.
That was a major disappointment — a missed opportunity for Las Vegas to catch up with a number of communities that invested in light rail years ago and saw their systems flourish. That includes cities with which Las Vegas competes for tourists and conventions, such as Phoenix, San Diego and Orlando, Fla.
The Maryland route wouldn’t have directly affected congestion on the Strip, but it would have provided a base from which a Las Vegas Boulevard line could have been added.
This would provide benefits communitywide, and not only for convenience of travel among visitors and residents. Light rail improves the values of properties along routes and also attracts development. Phoenix’s system sparked $8.5 billion in development, for instance, while Denver’s generated $2 billion downtown alone.
For any community, light rail also is a calling card in attracting younger residents, who show a strong preference for public transportation over driving.
Given all of those benefits, community leaders must keep pushing for light rail. As the Las Vegas Valley welcomes more and more people — by air, by car and by moving truck — it’s the key for keeping them moving freely.
