RTC planners work on two additional transfer stations

Jeffrey Libby

Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2001 | 11:12 a.m.

In rush-hour traffic along the Strip, packed CAT buses arrive in groups of three and would-be riders are often left waiting in the street.

Transportation planners are as frustrated as the tourists and are vowing to do more than laugh in vain at the problem.

Bruce Turner, a planner for the Regional Transportation Commission, can laugh with the best of them.

"The only way to put more buses on the Strip is to build a moving walkway on top of them and let people travel that way," he said.

But Turner and other officials are going beyond the jokes.

While more buses may be impossible, officials say more efficiency is not.

Planners have two new bus transfer stations planned that should be built and serving riders by early 2003.

Bus hubs in Henderson and at the southern end of the Strip will complement the Downtown Transportation Center on Stewart Avenue. They will allow riders to transfer more safely and more comfortably. Additional parking spaces will be available for people to leave their cars and travel by bus to work. And buses will spend less time "dead-heading," or traveling without passengers on their way back to transfer centers to refuel.

The RTC paid $3.8 million for the 10-acre site at the southern end of the Strip, at Gilespie Street and Sunset Road. Negotiations are under way with several private landowners for parcels in Henderson along Boulder Highway.

"We want to attract the discretionary riders," Turner said. "Someone who says, 'Hey, that's a secure place. I could drop off my daughter who goes to community college. Maybe she could have a little breakfast.' "

With additional express routes planned to the downtown and Strip destinations during peak travel hours, Fred Ohene, assistant general manager at RTC, says even more riders will be found. "We are trying to attract people who like the idea of mass transit, but believe it takes too long," Ohene said.

But even if the RTC is able to add to the 51 million riders it says rode the CAT buses in 1999, some say for mass transit to succeed in the Las Vegas Valley, planners will have to work toward a comprehensive light rail or monorail system.

"You can have these behemoths trundling around the roads," said 64-year-old Boyden Ralph. "And they're going to do the best they can -- with two new bus stations? Fine. But they won't do much good."

Ralph, who described himself as a retired movie extra, said he has been riding CAT buses since 1994.

"They can't keep a schedule on the Strip," Ralph said. "Most of the time they can't keep a schedule on Tropicana. And they can't keep a schedule on Flamingo. You just get left. It's a can of sardines. What you need is to trigger an epiphany."

For Ralph, that epiphany would involve a movement to gain public support for a light rail system like in San Francisco or San Diego.

Peggy Pierce, the conservation co-chairwoman of the Sierra Club's Southern Nevada branch, agrees.

"We need a comprehensive transit plan like every other major city has," Pierce said. "We're a city. We need an urban plan."

She said a light rail system is far more worthy of funding than the ongoing $883 million widening of U.S. 95 so that more drivers will be able to commute by car.

With the two new transfer stations, Turner says some congestion and air quality improvements should be gained. He points out that each full bus represents about 40 to 48 cars not driving on the road.