New Heavy Rail Lines to Ease Traffic in Vegas?

As often as we visit the Strip in Las Vegas, its easy to forget that it is in fact a functioning street. Overawed by the giant mega-casinos you forget that there is a rather busy street in-between. Its made even more busy by the thousands upon thousands of visitors. If you've ever left Vegas on a Sunday via the airport, you know just how many visitors the city gets each week. With all that traffic, its nice to know the city is trying to plan for its growing future, by putting in some heavy rail lines to reduce the congestion. This may lead to a nice vacation opportunity where you can stay in southern California, and take the rail into Vegas for a day or two. Sign us up!

A heavy rail line bringing tourists in from Southern California and elsewhere will have to be a part of the solution to growing traffic problems along the Strip resort corridor, Regional Transportation Commission General Manager Jacob Snow and other local experts agree.
Snow believes that rail links, including renewed local Amtrak service and a new magnetically levitated passenger line connecting Las Vegas and Southern California, will help relieve congestion in the resort corridor, which is generally bordered by Interstate 15, Paradise Road and Tropicana and Sahara avenues.

"I think we're going to need them both, Amtrak and maglev. (Interstate) 15 simply has limited capacity," Snow said, explaining that rail links can help reduce drive-in tourist traffic on Interstate 15, which is already clogged nearly to capacity.

With 25,000 hotel and hotel-condo units likely to be added to the Strip in the next four years, and possibly 80,000 condominium units coming out of the ground along the resort corridor, the number of cars in the area could increase by 50 percent over today's 225,000 daily trips.

Read the whole story at the Casino City Times

September 6, 2006

New Heavy Rail Lines to Ease Traffic in Vegas?