UNLV Civil Engineering Doesn’t Know How to Solve Vegas Transit Problems
Is there no one out there who does know?
This past week I’ve been trying to get someone in UNLV’s Civil and Environmental Engineering program to help answer my question: how should RTC spend the stimulus money to improve Las Vegas’s transit problems?
So far, only three have gotten back to me and but no one has any insight.
I emailed Dr. Edward Neuman who specializes in transportation with the engineering department. He said he hadn’t worked with RTC in several years and therefore didn’t have an informed opinion.
Dr. Hualing Teng said he was too busy working on other projects to answer a single question by email or phone.
Dr. Nader Ghafoori, the chair of Civil Engineering, said Dr. Neuman would be the best person to talk to. I guess he didn’t get the memo that Dr. Neuman actually wasn’t.
If we can’t rely on the so-called experts in transportation working at a public university in the city where the problems exist – then who can we rely on?
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EcoStreets
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Hey Aisha,
I’d say you’re probably wasting your time talking, or trying to talk to, Civil Engineering. Engineers generally have a different mentality about these issues and are more concerned about efficiency and things like how many feet off a curb city planning code allows buildings to be placed, how much traffic volume constitutes widening a roadway, etc, not why or what to accomplish. They are certainly not interested in changing the way people live or providing more options, but rather changing and enhancing the built environment to match existing expectations.
I’d look into the Architecture School. People with a background in design tend to be more interested in the big picture. You might likely get a lot of “that would be lovely to have this or that, but there doesn’t seem to be the political/economic will to do it”s tho. Which sadly is pretty much true, as far as I can tell.
I’m pretty well convinced that the pedestrian-hostile nature of this town is systemic and goes back to the beginning of the Strip and the automobile-utopian planning models of the time.
It’s pretty well ingrained into every inch of the city’s DNA. It wasn’t much of a town at all before cars and owes much of it’s success to them, and I-15. So it’s not just going to change overnight. I remember when I first got here it felt like a Martian colony or something. From the ground up, it’s a place for cars to inhabit, not people.
It just seems odd – the program is called ENVIRONMENTAL and Civil Engineering.
I think now that Las Vegas is slowing down, people are going to start opening their minds to alternatives to make Vegas a utopia. That starts with bringing people closer together and having a cultural center. How do we build that? With a public transit system that easily and cheaply takes them there.
Nothing is going to happen overnight, but a huge step and hurdle would be made if we got our community leaders and their networks to think seriously about public transit.