Mass transit extension to Northwest LV proposed

Friday, Dec. 11, 1998 | 11:54 a.m.

The Regional Transportation Commission will begin studying construction of a mass transit system into the northwest part of the Las Vegas Valley.

Convinced that a portion of the resort corridor mass transit plan is safely in the hands of a private monorail franchise developer, the RTC voted Thursday to direct its staff to concentrate on a northwest system that could connect to whatever system is built between downtown and the Strip.

Two route alternatives were unveiled in a draft presented to the RTC board. One, labeled as Alternative A, would use street right-of-way, pass close to medical and retail facilities and head northwest along Rancho Drive. The 12.7-mile route would have 13 stations, including a stop at the North Las Vegas Air Terminal.

The second proposal, Alternative B, would run along the U.S. 95 corridor all the way to Centennial Parkway. The 12-mile route would have 12 stations at major freeway interchanges.

The streets under consideration for the Alternative A route would be Bonneville Street downtown to Alta Drive to the medical facilities along Shadow Lane, then south to Charleston Boulevard. At Charleston, the route veers west to Valley View Boulevard, then north to Meadows Lane past the Meadows Mall to Decatur Boulevard. From there, the route continues north to Lake Mead Boulevard, then northeast to Rancho Drive and northwest to Centennial.

The Alternative B route joins the U.S. 95 right-of-way just west of Martin Luther King Boulevard and follows it all the way to Centennial.

Residents who attended the RTC's scoping meetings for the resort corridor fixed guideway system recommended the link to the northwest, said agency planning manager Lee Gibson. In the draft plan, the agency estimated that more than 20 percent of the daily resort corridor trips were to and from the northwest.

As in the RTC's resort corridor plan, the technology hasn't been selected for the system into the northwest. Next year, the RTC hopes to decide between two types of monorail technology or a light-rail system.

The Bally's-MGM Grand LLC, which is building a private monorail near the Strip, plans to use a so-called "light monorail" technology. The private company has been criticized for that selection because only one supplier manufactures the equipment and parts, a factor that could drive up the cost if the public system links to it.

Unless the RTC agrees to adopt the light monorail technology, Las Vegans would not get a seamless mass transit system. Some experts have said light rail is more conducive to the line extensions to the northwest.

To begin developing cost estimates for the northwest system, engineers priced materials based on resort corridor estimates. The bottom line: Alternative A would cost about $720 million to build ($57 million per mile) and Alternative B, $665 million ($55 million per mile). The difference in price per mile is based the ease of acquiring right-of-way along the freeway and the fewer stations offered in Alternative B.

If half of the northwest extension could be built on the ground instead of as an elevated track, the price tag would fall to about $40 million per mile, the report said.

Although RTC engineers hope to speed up the construction process, some projected ridership statistics are forecast for the year 2020. The report estimates between 23,800 and 28,100 people would use a transit system from the northwest each day by that year.