RTC runs transportation to the MAX

Friday, Sept. 13, 2002 | 9:16 a.m.

Regional Transportation Commission officials said a new "super bus" has essentially passed about six weeks of preliminary testing in the Las Vegas summer heat.

The testing is preparing the French-made Civis buses for regular use beginning in December 2003. The RTC plans to have 10 of the buses running along dedicated traffic lanes between downtown Las Vegas and Nellis Air Force Base.

The RTC has dubbed the new transit system the Metropolitan Area Express, or MAX.

RTC officials are billing the transit system as a cross between a regular bus and a subway. The double-length buses are designed to hold 120 people, a third more than ordinary buses, and are built for high-speed service.

While drivers will accelerate and brake the vehicles, a high-tech optical guidance system will follow a painted track to the subway-like stops, controlling the vehicles as they pull up to stops and providing precision parking for boarding and exiting commuters.

But drivers, not on-board computers, will have the ultimate responsibility behind the steering wheel.

"All a driver has to do is touch the wheel and he is back in control," said June DeVoll, RTC transit operations administrator.

The new system will run between 10 stops that will look like subway stops rather than more frequent bus stops. DeVoll said the bus route now in use along the line -- route 113 -- will continue to operate.

The difference is that the MAX vehicles will make fewer stops and will be faster for commuters, she said.

Another advantage of the new system is that the vehicles produce very little pollution thanks to a hybrid diesel-electric engine, DeVoll said. Each bus will cost about $1 million, she said.

With the MAX stops and a high-tech optical guidance system included in the price tag, the total comes to about $18 million, she said. Most of the funding for the project comes from the federal government. About $15 million of that has already been paid for by the Federal Transit Administration.

Sandraneta Smith-Hall, RTC administrative specialist, said North Las Vegas was selected for the project because the city granted the RTC rights-of-way for the system's dedicated lanes.

The special lanes are why the system will be used at least initially in the north part of the urban area rather than along the Strip, which has the region's most popular bus routes. Smith-Hall said it would be tough to carve out a dedicated bus lane along the busy Strip.

"It's a phenomenal system," she said. "It's rubber-tired rail. It's quiet, it's fast and it's got large windows."