Columnist Susan Snyder: Is Vegas built for people?

Saturday, Feb. 17, 2001 | 11:43 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Why do people leave the Las Vegas Valley?

We've all heard about the 6,180 people who move here each month. But another 4,512 people are packing out, Clark County Comprehensive Planning figures say.

Local researchers and sociologists have said people move here for the climate, new jobs, proximity to family and even housing prices.

"But everybody is so interested in people who are moving in that I don't think anybody looks at why people move out," a demographer in the county planning office said.

There are probably as many reasons as people. But being a veritable newcomer myself (22 months, 10 days -- but who's counting?), I sometimes wonder how long it takes to get used to living in Las Vegas.

An acquaintance who also has lived here less than two years says she ponders the same question. I'm leaning toward a smaller town. She says she's a "big-city girl" who needs a bigger one.

As we talked, it turned out the number of people had nothing to do with it, and we wanted the same thing -- a town built for people.

"Every time you want something around here, you have to get in your car and drive to some huge Wal-Mart," she said. "You can't just get out and walk."

In the past few years, more and more groups have begun studying the possibility that building more, bigger and wider streets and highways may not be the answer to the crush of growth.

Last month at the national Transportation Research Board meeting in Washington D.C., transportation engineer and expert Dan Burden said our "lifestyle of auto-based travel is becoming disruptive in virtually all households. New terms are being coined to reflect our declining civility -- 'road rage' is directly related to things not working and not likely to work with our present course."

Now before you toss the paper into the trash as blasphemy, take a look at what's happened in Hasselt, Belgium. A CNN wire story earlier this week says the mayor of that town was faced with adding a third beltway to handle the 200,000 people who commuted daily from the suburbs.

But the 68,000-resident town couldn't afford it. So the mayor abandoned the new road, tore out the other two, planted trees, built walkways and bikeways and made public transit free.

Free bus fare was cheaper than a new road. Downtown merchants thrived, and residents' taxes decreased as a result.

Here in Las Vegas we add roads, mark them willy-nilly and build projects that don't seem to make sense. Take Las Vegas' recent sidewalk beautification effort. The city spent about $50,000 on six spots. One is on Sahara Avenue east of Arville Street.

Workers spread decorative red rock on a land strip, leaving no sidewalk. In places that had a sidewalk, the gravel was added next to it instead of seizing an opportunity to move the sidewalk away from the curb and use the rock as a buffer between cars and people.

And next time you drive around, look at how many signposts and light poles are stuck in the middle of the sidewalks, making them impassable for someone in a wheelchair or cart.

Why do people leave Las Vegas? Hard telling. Maybe the town just isn't built for them. Maybe it's not built for us, either.