Alethea Martin, a political science professor at the College of Southern Nevada and public transit activist, rode all 39 of the Regional Transportation Commission’s bus routes in Las Vegas on July 4 to bring awareness to Nevada’s public transit system.
Wednesday, July 12, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Las Vegas public transit
While most people spent July 4 seeking refuge from the triple-digit weather or prepping to watch the night’s fireworks celebrations, Alethea Martin was riding the bus. Actually, she was riding all 39 of the area’s bus routes in what she dubbed “Transit Independence Day.”
Martin, a political science professor at College of Southern Nevada and a public transit activist, had done what no other person — to her knowledge — had done before: ride all of the RTC bus routes in Las Vegas.
“I was hoping with this trip to kind of, like, get people to realize that you can navigate Las Vegas without a car; that it’s slower, that it’s got its challenges, but that it’s possible,” Martin said. “It is more reliable than you think … (and) it’s not as hard as you think it is.”
When Martin, 36, moved to Las Vegas in January 2017, she was told many times that she would need a car to survive, she said.
It was a much different sentiment than where she was born in the Bay Area, with the sprawling Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, or in Riverside, Calif., where she attended college and had access to Los Angeles’ Metrolink light rail system.
Martin was inspired to take on the “transit challenge” by other public transit enthusiasts, like Geoff Marshall, who in 2013 set a mark recognized by Guinness World Records for the Tube Challenge by visiting all 270 London Underground stations over a period of 16 hours, 20 minutes, 27 seconds, according to the BBC.
After seeing videos from Marshall and other transit challengers, Martin wanted to try a similar feat in Las Vegas. And through the encouragement of friends and online urbanist communities, she decided to use her trip “as a platform and raise awareness for public transportation in Las Vegas.”
The RTC — more formally known as the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada — oversees public transportation, traffic management, roadway design and construction funding, transportation planning and regional planning efforts in Southern Nevada.
State legislation in 1983 allowed the RTC to own and operate a public mass transit system, which now serves more than 64 million riders per year, according to the agency.
“RTC’s responsibilities as the region’s public planner, transit operator and traffic manager are central to Southern Nevada’s continued growth, success and prosperity,” the RTC said in its 2022 Strategic Plan. “The work and services that our community expects and deserves from RTC directly affects the quality of life for millions of residents and visitors.”
In 2022 alone, the RTC saw almost 41 million passengers riding a bus – over 4 million of those being tourists, the RTC added.
Its fleet consists of 404 buses as of 2022, with routes going as far north as Skye Canyon, west as Summerlin, south as Inspirada and east as Henderson. There’s also a route that goes to Boulder City.
Martin’s one-day journey took over a year to plan, she said. At the start of her planning, Martin sat down with a book containing all of the area’s bus schedules and route maps so she could strategize how to hit every route.
Service changes, however, created some extra roadblocks before she could even hit the streets, Martin said. Every time a bus route gotten expanded, she needed to modify her trip.
“As they say, no plan survives contact with the enemy,” Martin said. “So I did have kind of an idea of where I wanted to be and when, but it ended up having to be a little more spontaneous than that.”
She started at 4 a.m. at the bus stop near her residence at West Sahara Avenue and South Rainbow Boulevard, heading west on the Sahara Express to reach some of the outer routes like the 121. Armed with the rideRTC application, which offers riders live tracking of buses among other features, Martin believed she was ready.
That is, until the first bus on her route didn’t show up, she said. Martin had to reroute herself, walk to the next street over and catch one of the buses on route 121 toward Durango Drive.
All was going well, she said, until one of the buses she was on started to experience mechanical issues. But the bus driver continued to the South Point, where a large group of passengers exited, then took Martin to her destination on South Maryland Parkway before putting the bus out of service.
Martin said that interaction gave her a much deeper appreciation for the many bus drivers who work for RTC daily.
Transit activism has been a long part of Martin’s life, she said. While living in Riverside, Martin said she was the only transit blogger — someone who documents daily life and observations on public transit — and even served on the city’s transportation board.
Las Vegas, in her opinion, has had “a lack of public enthusiasm for the public transit system.”
“I definitely do feel that there’s a real lack of that advocacy out here in Las Vegas; I don’t know of anyone doing pro-public transit activism,” Martin said. “We don’t have a Bus Riders Union or even a Citizens Advisory Board for transit out here, whereas all of that was much more common in California.”
It’s a huge reason why Martin wants to help foster more appreciation for the existing public transit in the valley, she said.
Martin argued that it could be “freeing” to have public transit options where you don’t need to worry about having a car, making car payments or worrying about how to figure out ride situations after events like a night out drinking.
But she also acknowledged issues with the transit system here.
One of the biggest pitfalls Martin noticed at bus stops was the lack of shelters or shades, especially outside of the various RTC transit centers. In a city where daytime temperatures regularly hover in the triple digits, Martin said a lot more must be done to mitigate sun exposure at bus stops.
Of the 3,600 RTC bus stops in Southern Nevada, 1,604 have one or more shelters, according to the RTC. That’s roughly 44% of the region’s bus stops.
The RTC has added shades at some of its bus stops as recently as April, after conducting a heat map study from August to January that identified which bus stops in Clark County saw the hottest temperatures, the agency said.
“Safety and comfort for passengers and vulnerable road users are top priorities for the RTC, and the results we gathered from the heat mapping project will help us more responsibly plan for the future,” M.J. Maynard, the agency’s CEO, said in an April news release. “By better understanding which neighborhoods experience higher temperatures, we can continue to work with local jurisdictions to create initiatives that mitigate heat impacts and reduce the risks of heat-related dangers across our community.”
Alerting passengers to delays or bus cancellations late was something else Martin said she observed. At one point, Martin saw that the RTC app had falsely reported two bus routes as canceled.
The opposite also occurred, when her last three planned bus routes all showed no tracking data and left her waiting on the side of the road for two hours — causing her to return home at 11:30 p.m. instead of 9:30 p.m., as she had expected.
Only one alert was sent out about service disruptions, and it was after she had finally gotten on the bus, Martin said.
As a faculty member at CSN, Martin took advantage of a specially priced monthly bus pass offered by the RTC, so it’s difficult to calculate what the total fare would ordinarily have been for the daylong bus journey. Martin’s monthly pass cost $32.50. A single trip on an RTC bus can cost $2 for residential routes, and $4 on the Deuce that services Las Vegas Boulevard. Certain people (like students, veterans, seniors, those with disabilities, etc.) can get $1 reduced fare for a single ride on residential routes or $2 for the Strip routes.
While planning her daylong riding on the RTC, Martin said she couldn’t escape the stories of riders who had gotten harassed, injured or killed while on the bus.
But Martin believes those instances are not as common as people think, and it hasn’t stopped her from using the buses regularly, Martin said.
Next, Martin is looking to take her observations to the RTC and help it identify areas where the system could improve — like those bus shelters. She also wants to push for the creation of a Transit Rider Advisory Board in either the RTC or local government.
“(This trip) gave me a real appreciation for how many people use this system for many different purposes — (about) 125,000 people take the system every weekday, and riding it all in a day gives you a sense of just the immensity of it,” Martin said. “And I don’t think many people in Las Vegas appreciate the importance of being able to make those connections and being able to make all of those trips … it makes everything possible for so many people.”
