Transportation study: Nevada ‘behind times’

Wednesday, March 22, 2000 | 11:15 a.m.

A new national study by an environmental group argues that Nevada is "behind the times" in spending available federal funding for mass transit and cleaning up air polluted by cars and trucks.

The Surface Transportation Policy Project, a coalition of 250 groups working for air quality and transit alternatives to cars, released the study this morning. It analyzes how the 50 states spent their share of federal gas tax money, now a little more than 18 cents per gallon, over the 1990s.

The study uses seven categories to rank states in four categories: "behind the times," "offering few choices," "middle of the road," and "open to change."

Among the study results:

The study also found some positive news:

"There's a growing awareness that we can't build ourselves out of the air quality mess just by building more roads," Roberts said.

He said a number of recent studies indicate that cities that spend more of their money on new and bigger roads don't fare better, in terms of air quality and traffic congestion, than cities that spend their money elsewhere.

"We do have to start looking very hard at these issues and see if we are optimizing our return on investment," Roberts said.

Roberts and an army of other state, local and federal government workers are wrestling with the tough issues of cleaning up air quality in the Las Vegas Valley, both for carbon monoxide and fine-dust pollution. The region is under a federal mandate to clean up the air.

One of the methods traditionally promoted to clean up air is to provide more mass transit and alternative transit -- like biking or walking.

"We need to readjust our priorities," said Jane Feldman, conservation co-chairwoman of the Southern Nevada Group of the Sierra Club. "It's not so much how much we spend, but where we spend the money we have.

"All this brings into focus the direction that we are taking throughout the state, but particularly in Las Vegas Valley," she said. "Is widening U.S. 95 through the center of Las Vegas really going to solve our problems? Can the (Las Vegas) Beltway serve our needs if we don't grapple with continuing suburban sprawl?

"Maybe we do need to change directions," Feldman said.

The study argues the same thing.

"The distrubing thing about this report is that there is so much money that's really being spent the same old way," said Barbara McCann, study co-author.

Ingrid Yocum, spokesman for the Regional Transportation Commission, said the Las Vegas area likely does lag behind other regions of the country -- but mostly because the region didn't have a public mass transit system before 1992.

The full study is available on STPP's website, www.transact.org.

Launce Rake covers growth issues for the Sun. He can be reached at (702) 259-4127 or by e-mail at lrake@lasvegassun.com