McCarran removes any chance of free parking

By Richard N. Velotta

Friday, April 23, 2010 | 3 a.m.

As great an airport as McCarran International is for Southern Nevadans — you can hop on a nonstop flight to 133 destinations with average fares that are less expensive than just about anyplace else in the country — locals are not going to be happy with the new high-tech parking system.

If you haven’t been to McCarran in the past few weeks, you haven’t seen the new short-term parking. Airport officials haven’t put out much information about it because the new automated pay system is in a “soft opening” while McCarran officials work out any glitches.

For years, the short-term parking lot at McCarran was metered. Locals would simply drive to the pickup area, find an open spot in the nearby lot, drop a few quarters into the meter and then find arriving passengers.

If you didn’t have exact change, no worries. There were several bill-breaking machines to make change.

As robust as the traffic at McCarran is — it’s the second-busiest airport for originating and departing passengers in the country — the pickup procedure has always been pretty simple.

But a piece of that is gone.

The parking meters have bags over them, just in case people might want to pay twice, and the change machines have been removed.

Now cars have to be driven through a ticket-distribution lane as you do at most paid-parking facilities. Drivers get a time-stamped ticket, park in the same lot as before and go to the terminal to find arriving passengers.

Then you pay on the way out. How much you pay depends on how long it’s been since you arrived. And that’s where the locals are going to be irritated.

McCarran is marketing the system as “McCarran Express Exit” where you “park, pay, drive away.”

We’ve been pretty spoiled with inexpensive parking for short-term stays.

“When I go to pick someone up, I usually look for a metered space that still has some time left,” a co-worker told me.

Who hasn’t?

I’ve noticed many people who have driven into the lot and parked, waiting for their arrival to show up. Only when the meter cop approaches do they reluctantly drop a quarter in the meter.

But Clark County, apparently tired of losing out on so much parking revenue and installed the system to make sure everybody pays.

For the short-term lots on the floors 1 and 2M in the parking garage, the rates are $2 for the first 60 minutes, $4 for one to two hours, $6 for two to three hours and $3 for each additional hour. The daily maximum charge is $36 and if you lose your ticket, the minimum charge is $36.

McCarran still has long-term parking on floors 1M, 3, 4, 5 and 6 where the rates are $2 for the first 30 minutes, $3 for 31 minutes through an hour and $1 for each additional hour. The daily maximum is $14, which is also the lost-ticket minimum charge.

The bottom line is that you can’t get out of the short-term lot for anything less than $2. Although $2 isn’t much for people who spend hundreds to fly, it’s more of an irritation for people who have paid a quarter or less for the same privilege.

It’s something that rubbed Pahrump resident Darlene Borgman the wrong way when she picked up friend Connie Papai last week.

When Papai flew to Ohio in March, the system wasn’t in place. But when she got back, it was.

“This is ridiculous!” Borgman said as she dug through her wallet. “They must really be hurting for money.”

When people are ready to leave, they must insert their tickets into one of the 16 kiosks across the street from the passenger pickup area. The computerized system prints out how much time has been spent in the lot.

In Borgman’s case, she parked for 13 minutes, which could have been handled with 50 cents in the meter with plenty of time to spare. But this trip would cost $2.

Eight tall kiosks on Level 1 handle cash and credit or debit cards, while eight shorter units are strictly for cards. On Level 2M, four tall units are for cash or credit and three for credit cards only.

When I checked out with my debit card, my kiosk had a hard time reading the card and spit it back to me. But another machine read it just fine. That must be one of the glitches McCarran is trying to solve.

If you happen to forget to pay at the kiosks — although they’re pretty hard to miss — the exit gates are equipped with credit card readers for payment.

I’ve heard many people complain about how poorly designed the parking at McCarran is. To get to the garage and the passenger pickup area, arriving passengers have to cross the busy taxi lane to go over a bridge to the pickup curb. McCarran personnel man two gates at the taxi lane and let pedestrians and taxis take turns crossing.

What many people forget — or maybe they weren’t here before 2001 — is that close-in parking used to be in a parking garage attached to the terminal and there weren’t any pedestrian-vehicle conflicts. That all changed after 9/11, when federal authorities prohibited public parking close to any terminal. McCarran’s smart and convenient parking setup was made obsolete by new security policies. Airport officials did the best they could with the new rules.

I note this because the makeshift parking setup and the resulting new parking charges cry out for a service that some airports are using as a convenience.

At Denver International Airport, for example, there is a free “holding zone” parking area for people picking up passengers. Locals roll into that lot and wait for a phone call or text message from the arriving passengers saying they are waiting at the curb.

Such a system solves several problems: It minimizes traffic at the pickup curb; it saves fuel; motorists don’t have to orbit the terminal circulation roads and contribute to airport traffic jams; it saves locals time and money parking in short-term parking.

And it keeps tempers in check. I don’t know how many times I’ve gotten a call from my arriving passenger, stuck at the crossing gate at the taxi line as I’ve arrived at the curb.

When surly curb attendants tell motorists they can’t park at the arrival curb, they often turn deaf when told the arriving passenger is seconds away. That may be McCarran’s worst public contact point, at that arrival curb, and it is residents who are abused.

One thing a holding zone for pickups won’t do is generate parking revenue, which is why it probably would never be implemented.

But is it too late to do something like this at the new Terminal 3?

Restaurant revenue

Restaurants & Institutions posted its list of last year’s top revenue-producing restaurants in the United States and Tao at the Venetian once again headed the list with sales of $59.3 million in 2009.

It was the fourth straight year Tao led the list. R&I said the restaurant and nightclub served 590,990 meals in 2009 with an average dinner check of $70.

Not surprisingly, most of the restaurant revenue news nationwide was bad.

“Most operators experienced some losses,” the publication said. “Indeed, half of the restaurants in R&I’s Top 100 are located in either Las Vegas or New York, two particularly hard-hit cities.”

Tao’s 2009 revenue was down 13 percent from the previous year.

The publication also reported that the highest-grossing independent operations in the United States had combined food and beverage sales of $1.37 billion, off from the previous year’s mark of $1.52 billion. It noted that the perennial No. 2 operation and a New York icon, the Tavern on the Green, was making its last appearance on the list after closing Dec. 31 in a bankruptcy sale.

Other Las Vegas restaurants in the top 25: No. 7 Lavo Italian Restaurant & Nightclub (Palazzo), $22 million; No. 13 Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab (Forum Shops at Caesars), $19 million; No. 16 SW Steakhouse (Wynn Las Vegas), $18.1 million; No. 17 Mix (Mandalay Bay), $18 million; No. 19 Craftsteak (MGM Grand), $18 million; No. 20 Prime Steakhouse (Bellagio), $16.4 million; No. 23 Mon Ami Gabi (Paris Las Vegas), $15.5 million; and No. 25 Top of the World (Stratosphere), $15.2 million.

Return of the spokesanimals

Republic Airways, which operates Midwest Airlines and last year acquired Frontier Airlines, announced last week that it will phase out Midwest and keep the Frontier brand.

That’s big news in other parts of the country where the Frontier brand is prominent. In Las Vegas, Frontier averages seven flights a day, while Midwest has two.

One of Frontier’s gimmicks has been the variety of animals pictured on the tail fins of the airline’s Airbus fleet. In Frontier ads, the animals come to life and tell viewers the merits of flying the airline. The TV ads became a pop-culture phenomenon in markets such as Denver, where Frontier was based before Republic bought the company and shifted corporate offices to Indianapolis.

Republic said the Frontier brand has more growth potential than Midwest.

Midwest, which was acquired by Republic last year, also has had a signature trademark — warm chocolate-chip cookies served as an in-flight treat.

Republic said like Frontier’s spokesanimals, the cookies aren’t going to go away. The company also plans to roll out a new spokesanimal later this month: a badger, the state animal of Wisconsin, a nod to Midwest’s former Milwaukee headquarters.