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Stumble$17 million downtown transit center set to open next month
A view of the Bonneville Transit Center in downtown Las Vegas Monday, October 25, 2010. The facility will serve as the central hub for the RTC’s transit services, including the Strip & Downtown Express, the Deuce on the Strip, Centennial Express, MAX and 12 other routes.
Monday, Oct. 25, 2010 | 4:05 p.m.
Bonneville Transit Center
Sun Coverage
The Regional Transportation Commission celebrated the completion of the Bonneville Transit Center on Monday, complete with the Sin City Rollergirls, a slew of local painters, middle-school violinists and a guy with a boa constrictor – all meant to showcase Las Vegas culture.
The $17 million, 20,000-square-foot transit center will begin operations Nov. 7. It will serve as the hub for the RTC’s services and will be home to 16 new bus routes, including regular and rapid transit routes, RTC spokeswoman Tracy Bower said.
RTC general manager Jacob Snow said planning for the Bonneville Transit Center began nine years ago. The RTC broke ground on the project about a year ago, thanks to $5.5 million in federal stimulus dollars.
“It feels like it has been a long gestation period,” Snow said. “I think that there is a lot of demand that we’re just scratching the surface of.”
Snow said the RTC chose to include entertainers – including Recycled Percussion, a group that performs on the Strip using recycled bus and bike parts as drums – because he “wanted to highlight some of the cultural opportunities of downtown.”
Formerly, the hub was the Downtown Transportation Center on Main Street – a building leased from the city of Las Vegas, Bower said. The new center, 101 E. Bonneville Ave., will be near many new developments downtown, including the new city hall building and The Smith Center for the Performing Arts.
The LEED Gold-Certified transit center will also feature a bike repair shop and space to store 100 bikes, Bower said. For a fee, yet to be determined, bike riders can store their bike at the center, and even shower in locker rooms at the site so they can get to work without a car.
Snow, who called the building an example of “greenfrastructure,” said the bike storage was his favorite part of the new center.
Eventually, Bower said, the site will add to its green appeal by offering bikes for rent.
Because the building has solar panels on its roof that will provide 50 percent of the center’s energy, SolarGenerations, a part of NV Energy, gave the RTC a rebate check for $359,450 at the event. The money will go toward paying the center’s costs and back into RTC projects.
Many Southern Nevada political leaders attended the event, including U.S. Reps. Shelley Berkley and Dina Titus, both of whom are seeking re-election Nov. 2.
People look over a bicycle storage area during a ceremony marking the completion of the Bonneville Transit Center in downtown Las Vegas Monday, October 25, 2010. The facility will serve as the central hub for the RTC's transit services, including the Strip & Downtown Express, the Deuce on the Strip, Centennial Express, MAX and 12 other routes.
“When I see this beautiful facility and what this is going to provide for us … I think it’s time that we appreciate what we have and what those stimulus dollars have done,” Berkley said.
Titus echoed Berkley, saying “Next time you hear someone say [the Recovery Act] failed, bring them down here and show them this facility. There are some things government does very well.”
The RTC construction project created 1,200 temporary jobs.
Mayor Oscar Goodman, describing what he called a “renaissance” in the area, said he hoped the new transit center would help downtown Las Vegas to continue to develop. In listing many of the new offerings on Fremont Street, he mistakenly called a hookah lounge a “hooker lounge.” The audience laughed.
“I can’t get rid of the reputation that preceded it,” Goodman said, realizing he had mistakenly pointed out one of the ways the area had changed.
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This is wonderful. In a city with little traffic (see LA), we are helping bike riders and people without cars get to their $8.00/hr jobs at a casino or Jack in the Box.
Never seen more weird people in my life than those riding a CAT bus. Kudos to our public patriots spending taxpayer money to assist those citizens living mostly in mobile homes. Plus thanks to our electric utility for spending consumer dollars for solar panels. Something wrong here....
As usual, dumb Nevadan turning a positive news into something else. Get lost and go back to your cave up in the boonies!!!
For real! There are always sarcastic people making something positive into a negative thing! I'm so tired of all these negative comments.
JBKayaker and Iamdjrebel,
Thanks! Took the words right out of my mouth.
Now then, while I disapprove of the new city hall, it's a reality now, so let's make the best of it. As for this transit hub -- yes, we had one of them too, but this new facility is in a much better location and will contribute greatly to the new corridors shaping up on both Bonneville and Casino Center.
Now if they can just get the Monorail to extend to this transit center at this end, and down to the airport at the other end, 2 + 2 is going to equal 5, or 6.
Is it a safe walk from the transit center to the Fremont Experience/Downtown casinos? Haven't been downtown in ten years. I remember lots of creepy people at the bus station. Is this the same place?Last time I stayed downtown, it was at the Plaza. Nuff said.
Shhh.... Don't tell everybody how much it is going to cost the Taxpayers to operate each and every year from here on out so people can get to their Jack in the Box jobs..
"Is it a safe walk from the transit center to the Fremont Experience/Downtown casinos?"
Daytime? Absolutely. Nighttime? Uh... probably not. If that stretch develops a constant flow of tourists (or local hobnobbers), perhaps. (And by "locals," I don't mean the types who are there now, at night. )
ANOTHER COMPLETE WASTE OF MONEY. How much cash we going to blow for these welfare transit rides?
Extend the monorail so everyone can use it.
All these bus line upgrades and new lines are completely idiotic and the only people using them are welfare cases that don't pay taxes. So we're spending millions on people that don't contribute to society. Wonderful - Didn't know we were a socialistic/communist country.
What is the reason they won't extend the monorail?
Bet the homeless are so excited about a new place to sleep. !
A lot of misinformed, knee-jerkers out there. For starters, a lot of TOURISTS use the buses -- up and down the strip, to the outlet malls, from the Strip to Downtown, and visa-versa.
But more importantly, plenty of gainfully employed Vegans use the public buses. I often have business at the Convention Center. While I happen to drive, I notice a LOT of my fellow workers use the buses. And when my car has been in the shop -- or I had to go to one of the larger conventions where parking was at a premium, I too, have used the buses. You see a handful of possible indigents, but mostly working people riding the bus.
But what would you prefer? That we take away public transportation and really prevent people from being able to get back and forth to work?? Brilliant. Thanks for the penny-wise pound-foolish crapola.