What else can you do?

- Let Google know that you want the “Add Destination” option on public transit searches. Currently, it’s only available for car searches. This option allows you to add stop between your main route so you can plan a more efficient trip.

Make your idea known here: Google Maps Suggestions

- Write a letter to RTC Southern Nevada asking for cell phone text alerts of bus arrival times. That way, you can take your time at the store, coffee shop, or where ever you happen to be without worrying about missing the your bus. Also, you’ll neve be stranded at a stop again because of bus malfunctions or traffic congestion.

RTC Southern Nevada
600 S. Grand Central Pkwy.
Ste.. 350
Las Vegas, NV 89106
Phone: 702-676-1500
Fax: 702-676-1518

Some stories from the wire..or, my Google Reader.

Local Vegas News

On the quest to burn the ring, an alliance of dwarfs, elves, hob…oh sorry, wrong story. But this is a story about an alliance. The Sun reports that Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Arizona have created the Western High-Speed Rail Alliance dedicated to building high-speed rail between all four states’ major cities. What about California, you say? Well, you can thank them for tanking Nevada’s economy, so proposals are underway for an impenetrable wall on the western most lines of Clark County. (Just kidding about that past part )

***

So, if you’re like me and walk around downtown a lot you know that the current Downtown Transit Center pretty much sucks. That’s why they’re building a new one! At $17 million, the RTC is building a multi-modal transit center for pedestrians, bikers and busers.

Neighbor News

Weary Angelenos may say goodbye to this ethnically ambiguous, scantily clad “hot babe:”

I know you’ll be sad. I see her everywhere, even in my dreams. But NO MORE! says LA city councilman Dennis Zine. He’s proposing a ban on these roving billboards that he says block views, clog traffic, and give people the creeps. This sort of thing has been up for legislation at least twice in the last couple of years in Vegas. Nothing has been done, yet. God speed, Mr. Zine.

Food for Thought

Carbon Trace asks an interesting question about statutes that forbid anyone under 21 from texting while driving:

“Do you suppose that people older than 21 are capable of texting and driving?”

If you think you can, please play the NY Times’ game to be sure.

***

Tom Vanderbilt has some thoughts on the existentialist dilemma of being a pedestrian.

“The irony, of course, is now that it’s driving that’s become pedestrian, and walking which is novel.”

CLAP.

Viva Bike Vegas starts October 10. See Viva Bike Vegas’s page to participate in one of their clinics in Henderson or Summerlin. Here are the next two biking clinics: 
Clinic 
Tuesday September 1, 2009, 7 p.m. REI Boca Park store in Summerlin 
This week guest presenter Jackie Arcana will talk about nutrition, hydration and training strategies. Whether you’re riding the 35-mile, the 62-mile metric century, or the 118-mile century, Jackie will be able to answer your questions on how to keep yourself properly hydrated or how to keep your energy where it needs to be to finish the ride. Jackie is a certified USA Triathlon Level 2 coach, USA Cycling coach and ACE certified personal trainer.

Rides 
There are two rides this Saturday starting from REI in Boca Park and REI in Henderson at The District.  Please note that these rides are approximately 25-miles.  We will try to leave the parking lots as close to 6:30 a.m. as possible.  Please show up early to make last minute adjustments to your bicycles, do a safety check and, if it’s your first time riding with the group, to sign your waiver. Below are links to maps for Saturday’s rides:

REI Henderson ready to go at 6:30 a.m. 
http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/nv/henderson/614125174920016677 
The Henderson ride will once again explore new scenery as we wind our way through the southern valley. This week’s destination: Equestrian Park!

REI Summerlin ready to go at 6:30 a.m. 
http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/nv/las-vegas/439125175193597740 
This week’s Summerlin ride, by popular demand, will repeat much of last week’s ride to the Red Rock scenic overlook and back. I encourage everyone to come out and ride this route with its spectacular view.

When I lived in France, I lived right next to a bus stop. The very bus I needed to get to my teaching gig about three miles away. I relied on the route’s brochure and constantly leaning over the window rail from my third floor apartment to see when the next bus would come. It was low-tech but effective.

Now, bus tracking companies like NextBus can update you when your bus will arrive. You can do it either on their website or from your phone. You can see my instructional video at the bottom to learn how to use it.

Another cool feature shows your bus traveling along on a Google map. Director of business development, Larry Rosenshein, says that the bus sends their system a signal every 30 to 60 seconds. Below is a screenshot from Georgia Tech’s red line.

The little red flag moves each time the position is updated, which is a pretty nifty sight to see.

Rosenshein says that this is perfect for bus systems that have a lot of “headway,” which is the fancy schmancy way of saying “a lot of time between stops.” It can alert riders to route changes, bus breakdowns, or whatever else. These messages can be viewed on the live Google map or messages can be scrolled on tickers installed at bus stops.

A disadvantage I ran into is learning how to navigate the cell phone protocol and prompts. During the filming of my instructional video, I encountered several error messages when trying to track San Francisco’s Muni route from Fisherman’s Warf. Depending on the complexity of a city, riders would need to be educated on how to use the text service -- what the abbreviations are, how to reply to texts sent from NextBus, etc. Given that a majority of commuters are lower-income and barely have access to a computer, better instructions sent to your phone would be helpful. (Recently, a study found that minorities use mobile technologies more than the alternative).

Rosenshein said he’s approached the RTC of Southern Nevada about using NextBus but hadn’t really pursued further than a couple of phone calls. Public information officer Tracy Bower told me that they are planning on their already installed GPS software to track buses. No word though on which company they prefer. Rosenshein did say that to set up their system, which takes around three months, would cost less than a brand new bus. In 2005, according to the APTA, a new 40 foot bus cost $354,000.

How would you use NextBus around campus? What’s been your experience with similar systems?

Instructional Video

UNLV Transit Hub Study Part 1

There’s no question that a lot of people live and work around UNLV. Looking at the numbers of the RTC’s study, without a doubt this is a busy core. And it’s not just people driving around, it’s also people walking around, biking around, and getting off in front of the university.

Students commuting to UNLV tend to live to the southeast stretching out to the 215 South. It’s a wonder then why there hasn’t been more development transportation wise in this direction. There is 200 space Park & Ride lot just south of the airport, but that’s already within five miles of the university. And we all know how long it takes the buses to travel five miles (link).

Those are all interesting facts, but the success of the proposed Transit Hub, wherever it shall fall, is the implementation of the Maryland Parkway BRT plus other Park & Ride facilities in the southeast. In another study, the Mission Group proposed this layout for the BRT and Park & Ride facilities (from the Fixed-Guideway Transit for the Las Vegas Region Presentation) :

ACE BRT plan

(Interestingly, this study recommended a light rail system but the RTC went with bus rapid transit instead because of price concerns. For an awesome analysis of BRT versus Light Rail, see Yuri Popov’s, physics professor at University of Michigan, post.)

And of course, the success of both the Transit Hub and BRT line depend upon a revitalization of the corridor – i.e. Midtown UNLV. But with the dissolution of the Clark County Redevelopment Agency, everything is very much up in the air.

The next stop is the Maryland Parkway BRT study. Please forgive the delays, but you see, I am but one person reading through thousands of pages.

A few months from now when the weather won’t cause your brain to crash like Windows Vista is the RTC’s annual Viva Bike Vegas. Raising money for the Nevada Cancer Institute and the After-School All-Stars, Viva Bike Vegas features “challenging” courses for bikers with rolling street closures and police escorts. In a sentence – the only way one can possibly bike in Vegas without becoming roadkill.

It’s on October 10th starting at the Spring Mountain Ranch State Park, all the way in Blue Diamond.

I think I might go…if I were get my bike wheels back and if my butt is up to it by then!

The new Park and Ride transit facility groundbreaking on Durango and US 95 was held on Wednesday, June 24th.

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.
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