Last night, I headed to the south end of The Strip to take care of some bidness and to get my game working a little bit.
Perhaps I will expound upon that later, but the real story of the night was not my anemic wins nor the atmosphere in the casinos … it was the trip home.
On the way back to Rexville, we sailed past City Center, flew by Planet Hollywood, then out of nowhere … got stuck in the mother of all traffic jams. Jesus Leaping Christ on a pogo stick, it has been a long time since I have encountered such abominable traffic on a non-holiday Sunday night.
Who let the dogs out? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who I ask you?
Even in this most dismal of economies, Las Vegas Boulevard is still buckling under the load, and if things get any “better” in this town — it’s only going to get worse.
While sitting in this traffic, surfing porn, and reading self-indulgent blogs authored by ignorant assholes, I had an epiphany.
You know those buses that are running up and down The Strip that are supposed to alleviate traffic?
Yeah, well, they aren’t.
Clik here to view.
The Ace on The Strip
Clik here to view.
The Deuce on The Strip
For years, I have been referring to the Deuce as the “rolling roadblock”. It stops very frequently and pretty much annihilates the right travel lane of the Boulevard. Even though I don’t really care about this while I am in the bus, the Deuce is the bane of my existence when I am driving or in the passenger seat of a private car.
Now that the ACE Bus has been added to the RTC roster, there are not one, but two rolling roadblocks.
Am I saying that our new bus has made traffic worse?
Yes, this is exactly what I am saying.
Through Rexville (from Sahara to the Premium Outlets) … I love the ACE Bus. It is a godsend to the dwellers of the city proper who can now get to the business district and Fremont Street in three to five minutes without even thinking about setting foot in a car.
This personal benefit being noted, I am going to have to give the ACE a massive fail with regards to the Vegas Strip. There were already too many vehicles on this slab of asphalt, and we have now added a new fleet of vehicles to the same street. Huge vehicles at that.
Fail. Fail. Mother F**king FAIL!
Imagine running the F Train up Fifth Avenue in rush hour at street level. This is the ACE Bus.
Las Vegas Boulevard is simply not a viable conduit for mass transit. It is congested, prone to accidents, constantly subjected to ambulances pushing through traffic, and gets shut down every time a visitor “exchanges words” with a local cop.
Even though I suspected this problem from the inception of the ACE, last night the true magnitude and reality of the situation hit me like a ton of bricks as I sat in traffic surrounded by buses.
Motorized vehicles are not the only things causing this gridlock, however.
When we decided to give up on The Boulevard and make an escape to the east, we were met with yet another gigantic roadblock.
People.
Clik here to view.
Pedestrians on The Strip
Clik here to view.
Pedestrians on The Strip
During busy nights, it is nearly impossible to get a break in pedestrian traffic and pull off of The Boulevard. Pedestrian traffic signals, especially in front of places like Paris, are regarded as suggestions at best.
Trying to take a right from LVB into the Paris or Flamingo parking garage is like a life-sized game of reverse-Frogger. People see your car, but they don’t stop, they walk right out in front of it. As a driver, you need to jam your car through a tiny break in people, and hope to god that you don’t kill someone. Since cars have to yield to pedestrians, and there are literally thousands of pedestrians per block, you could theoretically sit in a car waiting to make a right turn into a casino for three and a half hours.
It just doesn’t work anymore.
In my opinion, Las Vegas Boulevard has outlived its useful life as a “road”, and should be closed to vehicular traffic in the near future. At that point, concepts like the ACE, Deuce, and Trolley will work, and in my opinion, this is the only way in which they will work.
Mixing public transit with private vehicles on Las Vegas Boulevard is a clusterfuck, and the fact that we have not come up with a viable solution for this in 2010 shows nothing but piss-poor planning on the part of Clark County, the RTC, and the major property developers that line the Boulevard. It is a massive, colossal, unequivocal failure.
It is also one of the primary reasons that, when I just want to head out and enjoy the town, I am choosing Fremont Street more and more often.