Public transportation to Lake Mead mulled

Stephen Curran

Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2004 | 11:06 a.m.

The Regional Transportation Commission and leaders of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area have held the first in what both expect to be many closed-door meetings to possibly bring public transportation to the lake, representatives from both agencies said Monday.

Jacob Snow, chairman of the RTC, met with Lake Mead Superintendent Bill Dickinson on June 30 in Boulder City to begin discussing how to better link the popular recreation area with the Las Vegas resort corridor. The meeting was a "conceptual" conversation on how the two agencies could work together to alleviate traffic near the park, he said.

On the table was talk of possibly extending existing bus service to the park, or using existing railroads for a proposed light rail, Snow said.

"There was some interest on our end and on the federal land manager's (Dickinson's) end," he said. "We would, in essence, be linking federal recreation land with good transportation service."

Dickinson was not available for comment Monday afternoon, but park service spokeswoman Roxanne Dey confirmed that he and deputy superintendent Gary Warshefski attended the meeting.

Dey said she did not attend the meeting and that neither agency kept minutes or notes detailing what was discussed.

If this were to go forward, it's not expected to happen soon. If the idea gets the needed support, the fiscal reality could likely stall the idea for several years as the RTC waits for federal funds to pay for the public transit extension, a process that in some cases takes more than 10 years, Snow said.

"It's not going to happen very quickly," he said. "We're working to get the funds and we've just begun."

Snow said the two agencies have yet to come up with a dollar figure for the proposal, saying it was too early to tell how much federal support the plan would receive.

And the plan is not without critics. Jane Feldman, conservation chair for the Southern Nevada Sierra Club, said she questioned whether the proposed extension would drum up enough interest to say financially afloat.

"I hadn't realized that the public demand to Lake Mead had reached a point where people were asking for public transportation," Feldman said. "We really need public transportation in the urban areas so I was a little bit surprised to hear about the talks (between Snow, Dickinson and Warshefski)."

The Sierra Club recently financed a feasibility study to look at a shuttle system at Red Rock National Park, where single-car traffic presents a greater danger to the environmentally sensitive nature preserve, she said.

"I would be much more excited to hear about a shuttle system going into Red Rock but all of a sudden this Lake Mead idea pops up," Feldman said.

Ultimately, the Lake Mead project could become a waste of taxpayer money that would do little to ease traffic for Las Vegas residents, she said.

Snow said the discussions had only gone so far as the possible Lake Mead extension, an area consistently popular with tourists.

The project would be the latest in a round of transportation improvements for the area along the Nevada-Arizona border. The House Transportation Committee in April approved $6 million for the Hoover Dam Bypass, designed to ease congestion around the dam and nearby Boulder City.

"That's been a big bottleneck for a long, long time," Snow said. "We're trying to look toward the future and we're not going to have a choice to look at these options. We're not looking to abandon roadways but there's only so much we can do."