Objection to bus transfer location rejected

Eric Leake

Friday, Jan. 14, 2005 | 9:11 a.m.

Neighbors said a bus transfer area near College and Horizon Drives is a nuisance frequented by drunk vagrants. The Regional Transportation Commission said the location is integral to the future of valley mass transit.

The Henderson Planning Commission sided with the RTC against the appeal of a planned permanent terminal Thursday in a decision that trumped neighborhood concerns with broader need.

Chairman Dan Shaw said the planning commission was aware of the concerns, "but we as a commission also have to look at what the city needs overall."

Shaw spoke of the city's phenomenal growth.

"Basically, (Interstate) 215 and (U.S.) 95 are going to be parking lots in the future if we don't so something about that," he said.

The RTC plans to build a $2-million, 2,256-square-foot intermodal transfer terminal near the street corner and adjacent to the Union Pacific Railroad spur there. The terminal would include six bus bays and could be linked with a light rail system planned for the future.

RTC General Manager Jacob Snow said the terminal is a necessity and has been in the works for seven years.

"To make a very long story short, this is the best location we've been able to find," he said.

Snow said the current bus transfer along College Drive is little more than a street side. The city could approve a new and permanent terminal, leave the transfer as it is, "or we stop having bus service in Henderson -- those are the options as I see them," he said.

He added that $1.6 million in federal funding for the project was about to expire and that the RTC had made every possible compromise without scrapping the plan.

Commissioner George Bochanis shared neighbors' concerns about safety and nuisance of the temporary or permanent terminal.

"You have to admit those are valid concerns," said Bochanis, the sole commissioner to vote against denial of the appeal.

Residents from a neighboring condominium development, many of them elderly, said the current transfer area causes enough problems and that they were afraid what an actual terminal would bring.

"I am afraid, I am ashamed to see that around my condominium," Antonio Medeiros said of the transfer scene.

"During the summer I can't leave my doors open, the fumes and the smog are so bad," he said. "Every half hour of the night I am awake with the beeper of the bus."

Beverly Davis said she had seen people fall down drunk as though they were dead and use the area like a public restroom.

Henderson Police Officer David Wilson told the commission that he has had to deal with such problems at the transfer in his years assigned to homeless nuisance abatement.

"These areas are basically no-man's land," he said, describing people stealing alcohol from the nearby supermarket and lying nude around the sidewalks.

In siding with the RTC, the commission asked that walls separating the terminal from neighborhoods and businesses be topped with a type of barricade and an adjacent crosswalk improved.

Snow said the result will be a facility much better than what the neighborhood sees now, one that will add to the local and wider community. He committed the RTC to using compressed natural gas buses there when possible to cut down on emissions and said there would be constant armed security.

The project should be completed within a year, though the neighbors still may appeal the issue to the city council.