Wednesday, July 21, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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Now that Allegiant Stadium has completed the transition from drawing board to in-person events, it’s reassuring that local leaders have committed to an ongoing discussion about parking and traffic around the new entertainment and sports venue.
That’s as it should be, given that the stadium sits in a high-traffic corridor and features a fairly limited amount of parking directly around it. It’s a must for our community to ensure that stadium-goers can get in and out safely and conveniently.
As demonstrated by the first two shows in which fans were able to attend — concerts by techno artist Illenium and country music superstar Garth Brooks — some improvements are needed.
One that became clear during the Brooks concert, which was held on a day when Las Vegas tied its record-high temperature of 117 degrees, is the need for more water and cooling stations on the pedestrian walkway to Allegiant.
Beyond tinkering with the current setups, though, the discussions about improvements should focus on the long-term transportation needs of the resort corridor and the entire city.
And at the heart of those conversations should be light rail.
We’ve been calling for development of a light rail system in Nevada for years — well before plans for Allegiant Stadium came forth — and the need for it just keeps ratcheting up as major new attractions have come to the Strip.
First was T-Mobile Arena, then Allegiant, then the expansion of the Las Vegas Convention Center, then Resorts World. In the past four years alone, that’s the addition of a small city’s worth of capacity on any given night or weekend — an 18,000-seat arena, a 65,000-seat stadium, a 1.4 million-square-foot LVCC buildout, and a 3,500-room resort with a 5,000-seat concert and entertainment venue.
More big projects could be on the horizon.
The company developing the high-speed Brightline West train recently purchased property along Las Vegas Boulevard just south of the Strip for a terminal station. Assuming that plans for the new system come to fruition, it will bring up to 11 million people here per year in trains that can carry 500 passengers per trip.
It wouldn’t be a huge surprise if more pro sports were to come to the Strip, either, as Las Vegas has drawn interest from the NBA and Major League Baseball.
The Oakland A’s reportedly are considering at least two locations on or near the Strip — one near Bally’s and the other near the Sahara — as they seek potential sites for relocation. Although the Oakland City Council on Tuesday took a step forward in negotiations for a new ballpark for the A’s, the move to Las Vegas appeared to still be a possibility as of this writing. A’s President Dave Kaval said that despite the vote, the team and the city remain far apart on several of the terms.
All of this requires an efficient Las Vegas Boulevard, which had already run out of new capacity to carry automobile traffic before T-Mobile opened. Standstills are common during peak times, and there’s nowhere to add new lanes of traffic.
Light rail would provide a convenient and, if structured properly, free way for visitors to get wherever they’re going on the Strip. Indeed, with observation cars going up and down the Strip, it could be an attraction all on its own.
Combined with park-and-ride lots, it would also provide local residents with an easy option for going to a game, getting to the airport, spending an evening on the Strip or getting to and from work in the resort corridor.
A light rail system shouldn’t be considered a wish-list item, but rather a necessity to maintaining the economic vitality of Southern Nevada and, by extension, the entire state.
One key to keeping Las Vegas high on the list of global travel destinations is maintaining the visitor experience that serves as our main calling card for tourists and convention goers, and therefore it’s in our best interest to ensure that visitors can get around easily on the Strip. Keep in mind that the most recent visitor survey by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority showed that 93% of tourists stopped into at least two properties while they were here, and 68% went to at least five. That’s today’s Las Vegas experience — an exploration of the dining, retail, entertainment and gaming options on the Strip.
A light rail system that would connect McCarran International Airport with the Strip would make that exploration far more easy and fun than sitting in traffic or walking long distances between resorts or other venues in the heat.
Would it be a magic-bullet solution for our ingress-egress issues? No, but it would serve as the center of an intermodal system that would include the Las Vegas Monorail, bus service, shuttles, the Boring Company’s underground transportation system, and more that can all be utilized to make things run more smoothly.
Given President Joe Biden’s well-known support for public transportation and with trillions of dollars of new federal infrastructure funding under consideration in Washington, it’s a prime time to make light rail a priority.
Construction up and down the Strip in recent years has shown that Las Vegas hasn’t stopped being bold and dreaming big. We need to take the same approach to our transportation system by aggressively developing a light rail plan.
