I was rooting around the RTC website for inspiration for more how-to videos, and found that they don’t have a map for their bus pass vendors. Well, here you go! Enjoy.

This is cool stuff. Real-time package tracking. The little package even moved!

If I can get real time tracking from Illinois to Nevada, why can’t I get tracking for buses moving around Las Vegas?

Went around the Maryland Parkway corridor in front of UNLV Sunday, to see what there is to see. What I saw was parking lots! And a new parking garage! Here is the front of the school:

And the new garage:

Peachy keen, the first thing people notice about the university is the impenetrable gravel and concrete moat.

A 2007 survey asked students about parking – only a handful mentioned better alternative transportation. But the questions were very much skewed to get student thinking about how bad parking is.

Instead of asking – how would you PREFER to get to school or WHERE on campus do you frequent the most, they asked “Where would you like better parking?”

The numbers are also highly skewed towards faculty and staff – about 53% faculty and staff in the study. Um, hello? There are almost 27,000 students and only 46% of the respondents were students?

My conclusion – we can’t do anything with this study. The information gleaned can only be used to address faculty and staff parking needs. The university can’t make adequate decisions about parking and transportation policy unless a better sampling is taken.

Secondly – does the university really want to be encased in parking garages and lots? To the outsider, it doesn’t look so much like a university so much as a strip mall. Take a look at this screen shot from a map done by Mark Skinner called Walkable UNLV. Notice all those “P”s for Parking? And that’s not even all of them!

Update: From Allison Blankenship, PIO:

The RTC’s UNLV Multi-Modal Transit Hub Feasibility Study is near completion and we expect the study findings to be presented to the RTC Board in the next month or so. At this point, funding for the project is not secured.

Board meetings are on the second Thursday of the month at 8:45 a.m. Please attend if you think this study is important. I’ll be sending out reminders on here and via Facebook. Friend us to keep apprised of the situation.

Many local public institutions suffer from lack of visibility. It may, in small part, be due to lack of will to really inform. Or lack of people to inform. Or it may be that all the news happens in committee meetings and not on Facebook. Whatever it is, I’m starting up a new series “Stuff No One Really Advertises” to expose those things which go completely under the radar of the UNLV community, of course with the bent on mobility and livable streets (someone help me find a sexier name for this?).

Today, while doing some shallow digging on RTC’s website, I found a study done in March 2008 on possible transit hubs around campus.

Yes, UNLV and RTC want(ed?) to partner up to give students, faculty and staff better access to buses, bike paths, pedestrian walkways and car traffic. I don’t know about the last one because it seems to be in total contradiction to the other three, but ok.

There are five “alternate sites” where this could happen, in which I respond – why not build all five? These are indicated in two maps showing where some bus stops could be placed.

Stop #1: By the Red Lot, home of the soon to be built parking garage in front of Thomas and Mack.
Stop #2: By the bookstore, urban affairs college and student union.
Stop #3: White Lot, or as students like it call it BFE.
Stop #4: Free lot, again BFE.
Stop #5: UNLV entrance (where Frazier hall used to be) and Ham Fine Arts.

Here’s a map to help you visualize, click on the highlighted areas to get more information:

View Transit Hubs around UNLV? in a larger map
(For some reason its showing the entire US. Please keep zooming in.)

What became of this, I can only assume is another study – the Maryland Parkway corridor study which is evaluating the street for a possible bus rapid transit line.

What will happen to UNLV as a transit hub, though?

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (or AASHTO) came out with a report called Rough Roads which details among many things, a state-by-state analysis of America’s highway conditions and how much  car drivers pay annually for car repairs related to road problems.

Truth be told, I thought Las Vegas was going to be up there. What with all the contruction I see, I naturally assumed there must road problems due to the extreme summer heat, right? But here’s a comparison of pavement conditions between L.A. and L.V. from 2007:

City                Poor          Mediocre          Fair          Good
Las Vegas     10%           26%                   19%            46%
Los Angeles  64%          28%                    5%              3%

Hmmm. Why are we spending billions dollars again on highway and road improvements? By the looks of it, there’s no real emergency, yet the roads near my brother’s house have been ripped up since winter break. Furthermore, Angelenos spend $700 a year on repairs due to bad roads where as Las Vegans pay $246, way below the national average.

To reiterate: Las Vegas is spending four times more on just the I-15 alone than on the combined bus rapid transit projects over the next 20 years.

Just to give you an idea, here is an overlay of RTC’s own Las Vegas Area Constructions map with my map that I created. The solid light blue lines represent public transit projects.

View Mass Transit versus Highway Construction in a larger map

A lot of hullabaloo is being made about a light rail system that would go down the Virginia Street corridor from Meadowood Mall to the university. The Reno-Gazette Journal reported this at the end of April along with another article detailing more bus route cuts, and I hope you take a look at my own homage to past bus routes lost. Also, a fellow J-school student created this map of bus route ridership and neighborhood economic background:

View Larger Map

RTC Washoe is looking at Portland, Ore. as a model because they built a 2.4 mile long stretch of streetcar tracks. Portland is a good model for all the reasons stated in the article (increased ridership, residential and commercial developments along the line) but Portland proper has half a million residents, while Reno has barely 300,000 in its metropolitan area.
Read the rest of this entry →

I’d like to share some stories of people who have committed to live car-free for one year - and both the planet and cash saving consequences of their actions. The New Belgium Brewing Company hosts their annual Tour De Fat, meandering through eleven western cities, continually compelling people to join Team Wonderbike by giving up four wheels in trade for two.

What happens when they sign away their right to a car? They DON’T drive the average 15,000 miles like every other America. That’s 739 gallons of gasoline (at 20.3mpg). 739 gallons more for our children. It’s $2,217 (at $3.00 per gallon) NOT going to the Middle East to fund a number of things we probably wouldn’t agree with. That’s one more person not producing 14,336 pounds of CO2.

Watch these videos, get inspired and perhaps take the challenge. Tour De Fat 2008:

View Larger Map

The lovely and prompt people at Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) got me the statistics on the top twenty crash sites in the Vegas valley in 2007. Needless to say, they’re all along the Flamingo, Tropicana and Sahara corridors – the heart of downtown.

In the core of downtown, buses come between 10 and 15 minutes. However, at the intersection with the highest number of accidents, Sahara Ave and Decatur Blvd, it comes maybe every 20 minutes. Crossing that intersection is like crossing the Sahara Desert (pun intended). Eight lanes of traffic and 20 seconds to run across in 100 degree isn’t the answer. Fewer lanes and more buses is.

Click on the dots near your home and see how many accidents happen. I wanted to make a heat map but I’m not a code monkey .

View Larger Map

With a possible $25 million earmarked in the stimulus package for mass transit in Las Vegas alone, projects that better link the city are imperative. Roll-over the map above to see in more detail what these projects look like.

ACE, the new rapid transit line, will be the bus alternative to a light rail system, connecting the distant Henderson suburb to the heart of downtown. Another route will also connect the two downtowns – in North Las Vegas and a few miles past the Strip.

*RTC’s Park and Ride program, however, seems to be going in the opposite direction of having ecostreets. A few miles from the airport, commuters to the airport can park their car and hop on a bus to McCarran. Because of increasing demand, RTC is adding 160 more parking spaces. What would be better is an interlocking transit system that let you leave your car at home or not even need one in the first place.

RTC is still trudging away on the I-15 highway widening, spending $242 million on the 6 mile stretch. The two bus lines, however, total over 20 miles and will only cost a fraction of the highway reconstruction.

How should the city of Las Vegas prioritize or reprioritize its transport system? Leave your comments below.

*ETA 2/18/09: Information on Park & Ride.