Friday, July 8, 2005 | 11:12 a.m.
The increased concern about possible terrorist attacks on bus and rail systems throughout the nation didn't appear to have a negative effect on riders in the Las Vegas Valley on Thursday.
In fact, the trips aboard the Regional Transportation Commission's Citizens Area Transit system and the privately financed Las Vegas Monorail appeared to go so smoothly that some of those aboard were unaware that the systems were operating under a heightened security level.
Mike Gattis, a Henderson resident boarded a bus at the South Strip Transfer Terminal on Gillespie Road with wife, Candace, and the couple's two daughters after a family shopping trip and said the almost non-stop images shown on TV from London Thursday morning were little more than a fleeting memory early in the afternoon.
"I saw something about it," Mike Gattis said while cautioning 2-year-old daughter Rachel to stay by his side. "It's scary."
The scenes on and around the buses as they came and left the terminal Thursday afternoon didn't appear to be that different from what they would have been on any other sweltering summer weekday -- except for the intensity of the private security guards patrolling the quiet terminal.
Thursday's bombings of the London subway and a double-decker bus in that city came just hours before a long-planned celebration of the RTC's new double-decker bus system, set to go into service later this year. The event was canceled as organizers said it would have been "inappropriate" to tout the RTC's new buses, a different model from the bus that exploded in London but made by the same manufacturer, spokeswoman Shannon Stevens said.
At the Las Vegas Monorail on Thursday signs were posted warning riders that bags brought on board were subject to being searched. Thursday morning bomb-detection dogs owned by the monorail company were dispatched to periodically to check the trains, monorail spokesman Todd Walker said.
By noon, armed security guards were patrolling the stations and periodically boarding the trains.
Ridership figures for the monorail and RTC buses were not available Thursday afternoon, although Walker said he expected the trains to see "in the neighborhood of 30,000" riders, roughly the system's daily average.
Retired businessman Jimmy Stewart, who was staying at the Imperial Palace with wife, Martha, got on the monorail at the MGM Grand station shortly after seeing a television report in their hotel room.
The Stewarts said the Sept. 11 attacks had already prompted them to curtail their once-active international travel, which included the Middle East.
Since the attacks, the Nashville, Tenn., couple said they have ruled out future trips to most of Europe. England, despite the attacks, was still somewhere they would like to return.
"England still seems safe," Jimmy Stewart said. "... But it's a terrorist situation. I'm afraid it's going to happen here."
Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, chairman of the RTC, said he did not know if the new double-decker buses will come before the RTC board for discussion or possible changes. The RTC in August approved a plan to buy 20 of the coaches for $11.7 million, about $560,000 apiece. The model, an 81-passenger bus, was already in use in Hong Kong but was not in service elsewhere in North America, officials said in April.
Woodbury said he did not know if the explosions would lead to any long-term changes in plans to expand the service from the Strip to Primm and along the heavily traveled Flamingo Road route.
"We want to re-evaluate everything as we go along, especially in light of this tragedy, to see if there's anything we can do," Woodbury said.
The RTC buses, operated by contractor ATC, have a solid safety record, although officials will monitor investigations into the London bombings for clues to possible flaws in the RTC's security plan, he said.
By Thursday afternoon, as the threat level on all American transit systems remained elevated, neither the RTC nor Metro Police had received information on threats to Las Vegas, Officer Bill Cassell, a Metro spokesman, said.
Metro officers were initially said to be riding RTC buses in certain routes and were reportedly patrolling the terminals, but Cassell said there was no department-wide plan to dispatch the officers to the transit system. Instead, individual area commands would likely make the call to send officers as needed, he said.
Jim O'Brien, who heads the county's Emergency Management office, said each of the state and local agencies he would coordinate in the event of a large-scale catastrophe are prepared for potential threats to Las Vegas.
O'Brien's office had already increased its planning efforts a decade ago and he doesn't expect any any significant changes to how his office responds.
"We started our planning for all significant hazards after the Oklahoma City bombing (of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building), and we just maintained that level," O'Brien said. "The functions that we perform are the same if a bridge falls down because of a design flaw or an earthquake or someone blew it up."
The county is expected to launch a large-scale, three-day emergency training exercise July 11 to test preparedness of 78 total agencies including the RTC in six simulated emergencies, O'Brien said.
The exercise already included a scenario that involved the RTC, although O'Brien wouldn't elaborate as he said it would ruin the spontaneous nature of the exercise. No wholesale changes were planned for the scenario, he added.
But for Candace Gattis, who waited in triple-digit temperatures for a bus home, the possibility of a terrorist attack in Southern Nevada was too remote to change her transportation habits.
"I just don't think it's something that could happen here," Gattis said. "It is scary but I figure what's going to happen is going to happen."
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