Friday, Aug. 25, 2023 | 2 a.m.
It was a blazing 104 degrees on the Las Vegas Strip earlier this month when Ricky Kendall and six other bus riders trudged across the Interstate 15 overpass on Flamingo Road, each clutching water bottles and shielding their faces from the sun with whatever they could find.
Kendall, who works at a resort company call center, usually just takes the bus from the Horseshoe to his home off Flamingo and Decatur Boulevard.
But on this day the bus was nowhere to be found.
The reason: Construction work and repaving of the Strip for the inaugural Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix prevented the bus from reaching Kendall’s usual stop. Walking a few miles in the Las Vegas heat is problematic regardless of your physical condition, but for senior citizens like the 71-year-old Kendall, it was even worse, he said.
Kendall’s chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, flared up so badly that he had to use his inhaler twice despite the recommended dose being once every four hours.
The scene that played out is common on Las Vegas Boulevard as service industry workers are seeing their commutes to and from work altered because of the ongoing construction to accommodate the Nov. 16-18 events surrounding the race. Some workers have reported being stuck in a resort’s parking garage for nearly an hour after a shift because the Strip can’t accommodate the rush-hour demand combined with the normal visitor traffic.
Some parts of the Strip have been reduced to one lane of traffic in each direction.
“I represent tons of people that work on that Strip — tons of people, day in and day out that are fighting the traffic, that have no direction,” Clark County Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick said during a June commission meeting. “They don’t know how long it might take them on any particular day.”
One Reddit user reported having “sat in so much traffic for this paving project,” spending around 45 minutes to drive only 5 miles. Another described driving on the Strip to their job off Sands Avenue and Paradise Road as “torture.”
Kendall can speak firsthand of that discomfort.
He said the riders waiting for the Route 202 bus at the stop in front of the Cromwell on Flamingo Road were advised by a Regional Transportation Commission operator to walk almost 2 miles to the next westbound stop in front of the Gold Coast to catch a ride.
Other than the NFL Draft in 2022, Kendall said he’s never seen service get this bad in the 13 years he’s taken the bus.
“It’s really stressful (and) it’s hard on the employees,” Kendall said. “I get the feeling that F1 doesn’t care; I get the feeling RTC doesn’t care; I really don’t get the feeling that they really care. They’re just letting this thing happen on a day-to-day basis.”
The Las Vegas Grand Prix will take place over 3.8 miles of the Resort Corridor, bringing the spectacle that is single-seat, open-cockpit cars zooming along Las Vegas Boulevard at speeds up to 223 mph. The course also includes parts of Sands Avenue, Harmon Avenue and Koval Lane.
Track paving on and around the boulevard began in June and is set to last until October, according to Clark County. Planet Hollywood, Paris Hotel, Horseshoe, The Cromwell, the Flamingo, the LINQ and Promenade, Harrah’s and the Venetian and Palazzo are all surrounded by the work.
The congestion is most prevalent on Sands Avenue, Koval Lane, East Flamingo Road and Harmon Avenue.
Kendall said that many of his fellow co-workers in the call center, which employs more than 200 people, have experienced trouble getting to work since construction started, and it got so bad that the resort company is allowing them to work from home.
“Another thing that I think a lot of the employees are upset about — these aren’t just the people on the buses, but the people who are driving in — is a lot of these people are adding one to two hours to their commute time every day,” Kendall said. “That’s one to two hours every day that they’re not paid for, and for the people who are driving that’s every day.”
“It’s definitely impacting our service,” said Catherine Busche, director of government affairs and media relations at the RTC. The agency has received many complaints about delays on the Deuce line, which serves the Strip from north to south, she said.
To bring more awareness about delays, Busche said the RTC has posted signs at all of its bus stops along South Las Vegas Boulevard warning riders they may see longer wait times as a result of race-related construction. There’s also a warning on the RTC mobile app and website.
It just isn’t enough, according to Kendall, who uses the RTC application on his phone to get alerts.
“That’s all (RTC) is doing in apps on the phone is plan on delays, plan on delays, plan on delays (but) there’s no plan,” Kendall said. “I think it’s a puzzle for a lot of the employees (because) they don’t know what to do, they’re not getting adequate information and being told to plan ahead and plan on disruptions of service … that’s not adequate.”
He’s more frustrated with Formula One’s silence and argues employees on the Strip should be compensated for their struggles during the repaving.
“If F1 is going to be charging every person who sees or has a view of the F1 race, then they can use some of that money to maybe accommodate or compensate all the employees who are having to struggle to get to work for those extra hours it’s taken for them to get there,” Kendall said. “And I think they should cut a solid check … I know that’s very unrealistic, but I think it would be the right thing to do.”
Liberty Media, the parent company of Formula One, is paying for the work — although it is negotiating with the county to share the $40 million expense.
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