Tri-State Commuting an Interesting Nightmare A former partner of mine decided a few years ago that he would move his family to Kaysville, Utah and come down to Las Vegas once a week by flying from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas.  This was immediately prior to the tragedy of 9/11.  His grand plans to quickly get from one airport to another soon became a nightmare. My friend and thousands of others are faced with an interesting dilemma.  They want to work in Las Vegas, but live in other cities. The number of those commuting from outside of Las Vegas into the city is growing by leaps and bounds. Whether it is coming in to the Las Vegas Valley on a plane or driving the Interstate, the time to facilitate the suburbanites has come.  Perhaps planning for Kaysville commuters is a stretch, but how can the County Commissioners ignore the growth of the communities immediately surrounding Las Vegas? It is estimated that nearly 3,000 people make the commute from St. George and Cedar City, Utah on a daily basis.  As you get closer to Las Vegas, the number of commuting suburbanites grows significantly and the future will create a real problem for county planners if it is not addressed now rather than later.

Projecting where future growth will occur does not take a million dollar study. Based on the growth patterns nationally and also locally, it is easy to predict that by the year 2025, the Las Vegas Valley will be the center hub in a growth region that will run continuously from Kingman, Arizona on the west, to Cedar City, Utah on the northwest, to Indian Springs, Nevada to the north, to Pahrump, Nevada on the West and to Jean, Nevada on the southwest.  The city will consist of millions of people and will create many problems as this region will cross three (and maybe four) western state lines.

Consider what is currently happening in this developing area. The northern-most boarder town of Cedar City, Utah now has daily flights from its airport to Las Vegas International Airport. St. George, Utah will finish a substantial airport in or around 2009 and currently has multiple shuttle companies running every half hour to the Las Vegas Airport. Jean, Nevada will be home to a second major airport in the Las Vegas Valley.  Assuming home values continue to rise, a two hour commute from Southern Utah or Northern Arizona will become the norm for those wanting a little space and a more rural lifestyle.

So anticipating such growth, what should county planners be doing?  Let’s take an example of what not to do.  The best example is found in Southern California.  Twenty years ago, Central Los Angeles was the city hub and it was starting to spread east, north and south.  Cities that were considered rural like Anaheim and Irvine began to grow as housing was more affordable and the quality of life was a little better.  By 2005, the “outlying” cities were packed solid with commuters.  Indeed, other areas became city-centers by default and took away from a concise downtown business environment.  This led to dozens of outlying airports in Ontario, Long Beach, Orange, and Pasadena.  Now the skies of LA look like a game of scratch and the freeway system resembles a game of pick-up sticks.  The result is significant traffic congestion and gridlock and no definable place to conduct business.

What can Las Vegas do to avoid such a mess?

Let’s start with those who hold the keys to the solution.  The Clark County Commissioners must recognize that they are in the driver’s seat. They hold the desirable pot of gold. They can dictate how the entire system will develop. If they lack foresight, then Las Vegas is doomed to failure as the County’s budget will skyrocket as they attempt to fix problems twenty years from now.  If the Commissioners begin now, they can gain the respect of generations to come.

I am reminded of the city planning of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young that was done in the towns the early Mormon pioneers settled.  The roads were square and they were wide enough that a team of horses could make a complete U-turn. That kind of planning has helped many of these southwestern cities push off the problems of growth for years.  It has also saved these cities hundreds of millions (if not billions) in condemnation actions.

It is hard to be a futurist and predict what will occur in city planning, but it is also ridiculous not to follow trends and patterns.  In the west, if you build a road, the people will come.  That is just a basic concept that has held true in the last fifty years.

With that in mind, the Commissioners need to seriously consider buying land now for a rail or monorail system. Short of driving cars, a rail system is the only way to move thousands of commuters into a city center in a short period of time. If it is done right, it will lead to substantial prosperity for Las Vegas and Clark County.

Consider the payoffs for a plan of action that would have the county reserve additional land paths into the city from outlying areas.  Directed rail service would enter into one the city center consisting of a five to six mile radius.  This would mean that all major business would be conducted at the heart of such a system – where the paths all connect. Will such a system work?

If you take a city like Paris, you see a plan that puts all of the outlying suburbs into a city center of this type. Within a five mile radius, you find all major government, business and culture activities. The system is efficient and compact. Smaller city centers feed into the central system to alleviate and decentralize just enough work and people to make the system work well in the balance.

In comparison, the Los Angeles area has many major city centers that include the likes of Irvine, Pasadena, Orange, West Hollywood, and even San Diego. It is not centralized and it is not efficient. In fact, the city centers all compete with each other and traffic flow is crisscrossing patchwork with no predictability. With better planning, the majority of the business activities could have been forced into Los Angeles and the outlying cities would have developed in reliance to the main city center.

The lesson learned is if you control the transportation system, you control the commerce.  Certainly, each outlying city in Southern Nevada, Northern Arizona and Southern Utah will have a small city center, but that is not a detriment. Rather, the smaller city centers help reduce the traffic flow to the major city center, but they still must look to the larger city center for big business, e.g., national commerce hubs, etc.  Currently, St. George looks to Salt Lake City for that Hub and Kingman looks to Phoenix. That dynamic can change given the location of these cities.

Applying the lessons learned, we see that the Las Vegas Valley can force commerce into the Las Vegas city center by controlling transportation.  There is already a trend by these outlying areas to look to Las Vegas for commerce leadership.  Las Vegas has only to accept its role and implement a coherent plan to cement this relationship.  

As I don’t rely much upon politicians to do the planning, let me put it in black and white for all to follow. The city center of Las Vegas is found between the I-15 and the 95.  Four or five transportation hubs need to be created at the edge of this corridor in each direction in order to receive busses, trains and airport commuters. Lines need to then run from these hubs in every direction to the farthest distance possible, but most certainly to the edges of Clark County.  That will take the condemning of property sufficiently wide to facilitate two rail tracks, one incoming and one outgoing.  These need to be separate and apart from the freeway systems as the freeways must accommodate other geographic areas and we should avoid duplicating transportation routes. Of course the roads and the rails need to cross from time to time to allow for folks to drive and board, but other than a few locations, they should be miles apart.

There should be five rail lines coming into the Las Vegas City Center.  The North line needs to go north up through the City of North Las Vegas, through the North Las Vegas Airport, through Centennial and up to Indian Springs, Nevada.  The Northwest line needs to go out to Nellis Airforce Base, up through Logandale, then onto Mesquite and then terminate at the new St. George airport.  The western line needs to go through the Las Vegas International Airport, through Henderson, across the boarder and then onto Kingman.  The southern line needs to extend out through Roads Ranch and to the new airport in Jean, Nevada.  The final line needs to go west through Summerlin and then out to Pahrump, Nevada.

Inside the city center, the hubs need to crisscross and connect the hubs and provide transportation to each and every major street intersection, such as a stop at UNLV, the Convention Center, the County Building, the Furniture Mart, Downtown Las Vegas, the County Strip (north, center and south) and the Court buildings.

In 2006, this seems to be a daunting task – especially in light of the modest failure of the monorail system catering to the strip hotels. The problem with the existing monorail system is obvious and it should not be a reflection about what must be done in the larger transportation scheme.  The current monorail system is an attempt at keeping locals out and tourists in.  It is an absurdity at best.  It doesn’t even connect the airport to the hotels – I would guess politics has more to do with this than anything as such a logical system would necessarily destroy the taxi system and all of the political heavyweights therein contained.  

The monorail would be an instant success if driven to provide transportation for everyone, not just tourists, as well as those coming into the airport.  Consider the number of people who take a shuttle or taxi to the airport in the Las Vegas Valley.  If those fees were suddenly converted into fares for monorail commuters, you would most certainly pay for a monorail system, over and over again.  It is time to take politics out of it and prepare for the future. If the taxi system meets its fate, then so be it, however, this is doubtful as Paris has a vibrant system of taxis despite its far superior transportation system.  It is a matter of adjusting as necessary, but public transportation is a community necessity and the protectionist politics of a few must be shunned.

Currently, in the city center nothing is tied together efficiently for suburbanites. Even the furniture mart and convention center have no connection other than a two hour ride on a bus.  That isn’t efficient and it isn’t planning. The existing plan is failing the current population and it will ultimately fail miserably when millions of suburbanites look for transportation solutions.

It is time we scrap the plan in place as the only answers given are privatization of the monorail system and buying more buses. This plan and a cup of soup will get you a cup of soup.

Instead, the current transportation plan needs to look into the not-too-distant future and provide the foresight and leadership for the entire tri-state region.  If the planning fails in this point, it will lead to a substantial loss of revenue and income to the Las Vegas Valley.  It will also lead to solid gridlock and huge condemnation costs in trying to fix it twenty years from now.

Buying rail line property now will easily result in a long-term savings, if not a substantial profit.  As the rail line property will certainly not reduce in value as we head into the future, there is not a threat of loss, but rather such property would only increase in value over time.  Any rail line not being used can always be converted into open park space or sold at a substantial profit; however, property that is not bought today will need to be purchased by condemnation at a great cost in the future.

So the bottom line is the County needs to plan ahead by buying space for rail lines going in each and every direction as far out as possible.  Perhaps even into other states with the cooperation of the other states.  Utility companies and high speed communication companies can piggy-back the condemnation to help make it more affordable.  If the systems is elevated, then the property underneath the tracks can be sold to help buy and develop the lines.  Property immediately surrounding major stops is very attractive and would be worth a substantial leasing price. If at each stop there is space for a parking garage for commuters and bus travelers, then the location becomes a logical consolidation for a gas station, grocery store and the like. Indeed, future local planning would ultimately be based upon the location of the stops. Housing, commercial and government planning would naturally follow as these future stops would be an added selling point.

As we look at the horizon, we see the impending explosion of growth in all directions. It is already happening. If we can harness and focus the growth, it can result in a beautiful balance of transportation and commerce.  If we let it grow haphazardly, then the result will be costly chaos.  We can and must learn from other city centers that have accepted growth, but not the obligation of planning that comes with that growth. We can follow true international city centers or we can ignore them and spend five times as much to fix our mistakes.

Years ago, when Phoenix was on the verge of a population explosion, one transportation authority pled with the local governments to condemn property in blighted neighborhoods for future transportation needs. The local governments ignored him stating that the neighborhoods would still be blighted in the future and the cost could be allocated then. Of course, these neighborhoods were redeveloped just before the gridlock set in and fixing the transportation system became a reality.  The cost to the cities and counties was so high that taxes had to be substantially raised to make new freeways to bring people to the downtown region.  Of course, by the time the freeways were finished, other competing city centers developed, resulting in a metropolitan area that now resembles Los Angeles.  Much of the big business decided to go else where because the pool of workers were unwilling to make the lengthy commute to downtown Phoenix. In the end, Phoenix lost big business and it cost substantially more to buy enough property to even build basic freeways to bring commuters into its city center.

In contrast, the light rail system developed in the wide streets of Salt Lake City has been so popular that outlying communities are screaming for an extension of the system into northern and southern counties. This centralized system has also resulted in new development and business in the city center and has revitalized the previously failing downtown economy. Certainly, with our business, entertainment and tourism base, a Las Vegas city center would have even more to offer in a centralized corridor.

With the right planning and the right message to the citizens of Clark County, we can and must purchase rights-of-way now for a future rail system to efficiently bring commuters in and out of Las Vegas Valley, thus making it the center of commerce for an area stretching a hundred miles in every direction. In the fight for big business in the southwest, a good tri-state transportation system would make this region very attractive to workers and business as compared to the living mosh pits of the valleys of Los Angeles and Phoenix.