In the works: More places to park your car, hop a ride

Tuesday, June 19, 2007 | 6:55 a.m.

More than a decade ago, many valley residents who worked at the Nevada Test Site simplified their daily commute by parking their cars in a North Rancho Drive lot to catch express buses that took them to their jobs 65 miles to the northwest.

Although the express bus service ended after nuclear weapons testing at the site halted in 1992, the simple transportation concept behind it - park and ride facilities - are about to hit Las Vegas on a grand scale.

The Regional Transportation Commission is negotiating with property owners to buy parcels of land in the northwest valley, including one near Durango Drive and Summerlin Parkway, to use as parking lots for commuters who will ride rapid transit buses downtown.

The park and ride lots would be the first of more than a dozen that the commission would like to build during the next decade, linking highways to rapid mass transit in an effort to reduce congestion on roads while saving motorists the agony of fighting traffic.

Salvation for northwest valley commuters will come in the form of buses, including the double-decker 97-seat Deuce, that will travel down express lanes to open after the ongoing widening of U.S. 95 is completed.

The express buses will deposit commuters at the Downtown Transportation Center, where they will then be able to catch other buses to their destinations.

"We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't think it would work well in Las Vegas," commission General Manager Jacob Snow said. "We've had a lot of interest from the public in developing these park and rides."

When the Nevada Transportation Department opens the wider U.S. 95 from Martin Luther King Boulevard near the Spaghetti Bowl to Craig Road this year, the broadened highway will include a dedicated lane in each direction for use only by multipassenger vehicles during morning and afternoon rush hours.

That corridor will be served by the park and ride facilities the commission hopes to open beginning early next year. There also are plans to install fiber-optic technology along the wider portion of U.S. 95 so bus commuters can work on laptop computers using wireless connections.

"Saving people time and money are the two big incentives," Snow said. "We can build the park and ride lots quickly, but it's getting the land that's the challenge."

Some of the land the commission is eyeing throughout the valley for parking lots is privately owned, while other parcels belong to the Bureau of Land Management. Snow said there are plans to combine some of the lots with affordable - housing developments.

In many cases the MAX rapid transit bus system will be offered at park and ride facilities. As long as the commission provides good mass transit service that saves people money and gets them to their destinations on time, Snow anticipates no problem filling the park and ride lots.

Two retirees who live near Durango and U.S. 95 said they think the park and ride facilities will be popular with commuters in that area.

One, George Miller, said she quit as an American Red Cross volunteer because it took her 75 to 90 minutes to commute to and from the organization's office at 1771 E. Flamingo Road.

"For people who are barely affording their homes , cutting down on that gas money would be a help," Miller said.

Richard Rychtarik suggested that the commission use the park and ride facilities on weekends to provide buses for seniors who wish to attend special events at locations such as the Thomas & Mack Center.

"A lot of seniors don't want to drive at night, and I have friends who won't drive on the freeways," he said.

Because park and ride programs for users of buses, subways or trains have existed nationwide for several decades, Las Vegas in one sense is playing catch-up on a proven transit idea.

Las Vegas has been slow to embrace the concept in large part because its residential and employment centers are spread throughout the valley, minimizing the kind of densely traveled corridors on which park and ride programs thrive.

The region's continuing rapid growth, however, is changing that, causing officials to think the time is right to expand local transportation options.

Beyond relieving traffic congestion, other major advantages of park and ride programs include the savings that motorists enjoy from reduced gasoline costs and less wear and tear on their vehicles.

In many cases, park and ride programs have been so successful that motorists complain that there aren't enough parking spaces.

For example, many parking lots operated by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which serves commuters traveling to Boston from suburbs throughout the metropolitan region, are filled by 7:30 a.m., authority spokesman Joe Pesaturo said.

"Since the 1990s we have added about 20,000 parking spaces to keep up with demand," Pesaturo said. The transportation authority charges $2 per day for parking.

Commuters enjoy free parking at 27 lots operated by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or Metro, which operates 73 miles of rail service as well as express bus lines. The parking lots range from a few hundred spaces to 4,000 at downtown's Union Station.

"Los Angeles is obviously so densely populated and the traffic is atrocious , so we try to give commuters alternatives," Metro spokesman Rick Jager said.

Metro has found that once commuters learn of the parking lots adjacent to rail stations, they take full advantage . Both the Metro lot outside Universal Studios, which has 1,000 spaces, and a 1,200-space lot nearby in North Hollywood normally fill up by 7 a.m. on weekdays.

Like other transit agencies that operate park and ride programs, the Washington State Transportation Department provides information on its Web site about the location and capacity of parking lots throughout the state, together with the mode of transportation available. In the Puget Sound area alone, including Seattle, the demand was such that the number of parking spaces for commuters was 24,695 in 2005, a 50 percent increase from a decade earlier.

To promote its park and ride program and those of regional transit agencies, the transportation department works with Washington companies with at least 100 employees.

"It saves parking spaces for their own customers," Transportation Department spokeswoman Tonia Buell said. "It also saves them money on parking space costs. A lot of the companies subsidize transit passes for their employees."