Roads an uncertain fit

Thursday, May 17, 2007 | 7:12 a.m.

CARSON CITY - A sunny state is drawing the hordes, and they're clogging the roads. Everyone agrees: We must widen our roads, and build new ones. There's a battle about where the money will come from. It's California in the 1950s.

This scenario sounds familiar to Nevadans, however, as the Silver State now faces the same transportation predicament. State government players are in the middle of intense negotiations over where to find money for roads; a transportation task force says policymakers will have to find $3.8 billion between now and 2015.

What's largely absent from the discussion, however, is whether widening and building are a good strategy for a transportation future, whether more roads will turn Las Vegas into cities infamous for traffic jams - Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston - where clenching the steering wheel in frustration is a regular part of life.

"You can't build your way out of the problem, and if Nevada thinks it can, give it a couple decades, and you'll be like us," said Marc Littman, a spokesman for Los Angeles' Metro Transportation Authority.

Los Angeles finally learned its lesson, Littman said, and starting in the 1990s, used a combination of light rail, subways, expanded bus service, technologically enabled stoplight synchronization and car pool lanes to hold the line on traffic. The situation hasn't improved, but it's gotten no worse, Littman said.

The problem for Nevada policymakers is that 100 cars are joining Las Vegas roads every day, and a fix is needed now. Assemblyman Kelvin Atkinson, D-North Las Vegas, said he's concerned a lack of mass transit in Southern Nevada will turn Las Vegas into Los Angeles. But for now, "I'm focused on the $3.8 billion," he said, referring to the road shortfall.

Atkinson, chairman of the Transportation Committee, said he will request a study next session on a major mass transit system in Southern Nevada. But that's not for two years, and even if approved by the Legislature or voters, construction wouldn't begin for years. The problem facing traffic planners is paradoxical: More road building often leads to more traffic.

The concept is called "induced traffic" and goes like this: With new roads, people live farther from work and shopping, and the new roads fill up. Same with widened roads. Supply creates new demand.

Rudy Malfabon, the Nevada Transportation Department's deputy director for Southern Nevada, said the state is trapped by its booming growth. "Development happens, regardless of what we do," he said. "You can't win either way."

Mass transit and smart-growth advocates disagree and say growth planned around transit, as in cities such as Baltimore and Seattle, can ease traffic.

Regardless, Malfabon said the Transportation Department has supported Las Vegas' move toward more mass transit. It has advocated measures in road projects to alleviate congestion. Improvements to U.S. 95, for instance, will include car pool lanes, a Las Vegas first.

The Regional Transportation Commission can point to progress on the mass transit front.

Last year the commission announced plans for so-called rubber-tired rapid transit.

The RTC hopes that the new series of bus routes with dedicated lanes will score points with commuters across the Las Vegas Valley as the most convenient way to reach their jobs on the Strip and downtown.

One such line already exists. The nine-mile Metropolitan Area Express line, known as MAX, runs along Las Vegas Boulevard from the Downtown Transportation Center to Nellis Air Force Base, and travels the distance in half the time as a regular CAT bus.

"Our transportation challenges are not caused by a failure to plan," Transportation Commission spokeswoman Tracy Bower said. "The challenge is getting the money to implement the plans we have."

The second two routes will come on line in early 2009. One, which will run from the Downtown Transportation Center to the resort corridor on the Strip, will cost about $60 million. The other, running along Boulder Highway from Horizon Drive in Henderson to downtown Las Vegas, will cost about $90 million.

The agency is also building park-and-ride lots for an express bus service along U.S. 95 that is expected to start when the road project is completed this year.

Light rail, which is popping up all over the United States, tends to help growing cities shape their growth and ease the demand for more freeways.

That's one reason it was once the dream of mass transit advocates in Southern Nevada, but it's dead for now.