Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Driving people away

Tuesday, July 11, 2000 | 9:22 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

A long, hot, Las Vegas summer.

This is not one of them. The weatherman has been pretty good about not sending too many of those scorchers our way. With any luck, we'll be able to say as much this time in August.

However, there are some people who are getting so hot that they can't even see straight. And that is very dangerous, since those are the people driving from Las Vegas back to their homes in Southern California. For them, the heat is not the only thing that is making the summer days in this city so unbearably long. Let me explain.

Sunday at 3:43 p.m. I was driving home from the golf course. In reasonable traffic it would take me 10 to 11 minutes. With the unexpected, it could take an extra three minutes to get home. As I approached the Interstate 15 freeway from the west I noticed a bunch of other people heading toward their homes. In fact, there were hundreds of them traveling south on the interstate toward Los Angeles. They were moving at speeds of less than 10 miles per hour. From the looks of things down the freeway, they were not likely to increase that speed anytime soon.

I remember not long ago that it took four hours or less to drive from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. That included a stop at Dairy Queen or the In-N-Out Burger, or both. In the past 10 years, the traveling time has been slowed, especially on Sundays, to almost seven hours. That is a long time to sit in your car.

It is an especially long time for customers -- our customers -- to curse the thought of returning anytime soon to Las Vegas if it means taking seven hours and up to get home on Sunday. Many of them must be thinking of smarter ways to lose their money in Las Vegas. Perhaps leaving a day earlier would solve their problems.

Besides the obvious conclusion many people would reach -- that driving up and back for less than one day is not worth the effort -- have you ever stopped to consider what one less day means to Las Vegas? I think the number is somewhere in the billions of dollars in lost revenues. That's a minimum of thousands of lost jobs in the process.

So what are we doing about this lose-lose situation? After years of talking about the problem it is safe to say: not much. You might ask what the Strip moguls are doing to make their customers' experience on the way home more pleasant. You might also consider what the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority is doing to make Las Vegas a more driver-friendly place to visit. If you get that far you might consider what our elected officials -- local, state and national -- are doing to make sure this problem is alleviated. In each case the answer remains: not much.

I have to admit that unlike most of the Strip bigwigs who have probably not driven the route in some time, especially on a Sunday, and therefore don't even know what I am talking about, I was stupid enough one time to do what all of those cars were doing Sunday. The four-hour trip took almost eight. I don't have to learn that lesson twice. How much longer do we think people who come here to lose their money will continue this madness?

Since no one seems willing to do what needs to be done -- build more freeways, a bullet train and/or make an investment in teleportation -- I have a few ideas that should alleviate the problem. Unfortunately, they are short-term fixes with very bad long-term consequences.

The first one is the easiest because California is already well down the road to Indian gaming. In less than a handful of years, there will be reservation-based casinos within an hour's drive for almost every one of our "loyal" customers. Given the choice of a few minutes in the car or a lifetime on the road, what do you think the answer will be. That should result in far fewer people making the weekend drive, which should make the freeways safer and faster for the remaining cars.

The next idea is Internet gaming. While most of the country figures out how to ban the virtual casinos, the smart people are building more and more Web-based gambling sites. Pretty soon, people won't even have to leave their homes to lose their money. Think of how many fewer cars will be clogging up an overburdened I-15 then! Of course, the downside is that people will not have to leave their homes until the foreclosures are complete but, not to worry, they will have lost their cars long before that time.

The third and most surefire way to free up those freeway lanes is the high-level nuclear waste dump. The Republican-controlled House and Senate are already hard at work to make sure that Nevada gets that dump as soon as possible. When that happens, no one will want to drive down the road next to an 18-wheeler carrying deadly plutonium. Not even at a slow-pokey safe 10 miles per hour! Just think of it, no more traffic jams. No more traffic. Considering the circumstances, we are very lucky that people still want to drive here. I think the message, though, is clear. We must stop immediately taking their good will for granted. Spend the time and the money it takes to fix this problem and do it soon. It is just my opinion, but those other solutions really aren't that good.

I can't let this column pass without congratulating my friend Fred Smith. He has been a passionate golfer for over 40 years. He has played practically every course ever built. He has scored as well and as badly as most people who have played the game. But until Sunday he had never had a hole in one.

Now he has one. It was a brilliant, 4-iron that he hit 200 yards and one-bounced into the hole. To hear Fred tell it -- and tell it, and tell it -- his wife, Elaine, and daughter, Staci (both of whom witnessed the odds-busting effort) are the best things that ever happened to him. By a lot. But whatever is in third place is so far distant to that hole in one that it defies definition.

Congratulations, Fred. Now try for number two!

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