Two Way Hard Three | Las Vegas Casino & Design Blog

Posted by mike_ch

We need more mass transit on the strip and less personal cars, trains of guys on rented motorcycles, Lamborghinis by the hour, and the other stuff I saw on the Strip yesterday. But with a $10 day pass ($5 for the Deuce) I'm not sure this'll work.

On our last trip I noticed Wynn is running free buses up and down the strip. Are those new, or had I just not seen them before? They're hard to miss since they look like standard municipal buses painted bright red with Wynn's trademark floral motif. I have no idea where they make stops besides the obvious bus terminal.

Posted by mike_ch

The Luxor marketing folks sent me a Flash-y email about "the new Luxor", with a rundown of all their new stuff for people from LA who use too much cologne and hair gel: http://www.luxor.com/offers/2007/10_insider/Luxor_f.html

It's nice, but I still can't help but feel they're just going over the ground they've already got covered with MGM Grand and Mirage.

Posted by detroit1051

Wynn's buses used to drive around the golf course perimeter to get people to and from the Convention Center. With Encore construction, are they doing the same thing on public streets now? It's hard to believe Steve would give free bus rides up and down the Strip. The riders wouldn't exactly fit his target market.

Mike_ch, "...people from LA who use too much cologne and hair gel" is a great description. I've got to share it with some LA friends.

"I still can't help but feel they're just going over the ground they've already got covered"
-- this applies to most everything MGM does these days.

re: the Arrow, these are shuttle buses, not mass-transit buses. I doubt they'll really supplant the Deuce, but it's another option, and it connects up to the Monorail, which isn't all bad.

I'm most encouraged by the tram pylons in CityCenter. If they expand on that line it would be huge. Even just connecting NYNY to Bellagio would be nice.

Posted by mike_ch

I've been seeing Wynn buses going up and down the Strip recently. I'm not sure where they're stopping, but I see them as far south as Flamingo sometimes.

The only time I've taken a Wynn bus as of late was to the Monorail, and it took the same Sands and Convention Center route it normally does.

We're gonna have to use more mass transit on the Strip. What's the % of room capacity increase in 5 years (25 to 30%)? I like using the Monorail. So much so that I will use it even though I rent when we go to Las Vegas. Figure the time and cost to valet, or take a cab, and $10.00 per day doesn't seem very expensive. The Monorail is still going to be around after it goes bankrupt. The county or state will subsidize it. They'll complain, but every other mass transist system in the country is government subsized. Some kind of matching federal funds will be tied to keeping the monorail around, IMO. The tie in to the Vegas.com bus is good marketing, and will pay off in the long run.

Posted by mike_ch

Problem is, the monorail isn't really public transit per se, since it hardly serves the public here. It serves business interests, and really those business interests ought to pick up the bill.

Maybe if the hotels were the ones having to pay to keep the Monorail moving, they'd stop shafting it to the back of their properties where nobody wants to be. The reason nobody even bothers to ride it is because it's way the heck out yonder.

No business = no people = no roads. The Monorail is there to help take the load off impossibly congested roads with the only possible location. It is not way out younder-just an under utilized access area :). How many non casino businesses pay any taxes in Nevada? How many individuals pay state income tax in Nevada? How much of the tax burden in Nevada is paid by out of state visitors to the casinos?

Posted by mike_ch

Florida is the same way as far as not having to pay state income tax, and somehow they manage to make the gears turn.

I use public transit, as all my Stripwalks are accomplished riding to the Strip on CAT, and usually riding home unless I have an arranged ride back to the neighborhood. I get around on foot, on Deuce, and yes, on the Monorail (hooray for $1 locals tickets, right?) However, if we increase the amount of mass transit infrastructure here, then I want some form of RAPID transit so it doesn't take 90-120 minutes to get from the burbs to the business core in the 20-40 minutes it takes people in their own cars!

Posted by detroit1051

"Florida is the same way as far as not having to pay state income tax, and somehow they manage to make the gears turn."
The gears don't turn very well, imo, but I hope we never consider a state income tax here.

I've watched traffic on the Strip increase so much over the years, that I never drive it any more. The problem now is that the parallel roads are getting almost as crowded, Paradise, Swenson, Industrial, Frank Sinatra, etc.

The monorail is a great way to get around, especially if one is going from MGM Grand to the Convention Center. What deters customers is the long walk to the stations. Someone staying at The Mirage has to walk across the Strip, through Harrah's all the way to the back of the property. Then, if they're just going to Bellagio, they need to get off at the Flamingo station and walk trhough the property and cross the Strip. Not exactly welcoming to tourists.

It would be a huge mistake to build an elevated monorail down the center of the Strip, but whatever happened to the idea of taking the islands out and having rapid, automated trains going down the center of the Strip at ground level?

The problem with running street level mass transit down the center of the Strip is then what do you do with the left turn lanes?

Posted by mike_ch

It seems at some point they'll have to stop adding capacity, or at least stretch it out. There was a time when the Strip was moving farther and farther south and they had to keep moving the Welcome sign further on down the road to reflect that. Now we're seeing a boom of destroying old hotels with small room counts and building massive hotels in their place (CityCenter, Plaza, Echelon, Crown, Wynn Golf Course.)

What's frustrating is that the companies behave as if they seemingly don't care about if their plans play havoc with the logistics. They just leave that to the public sector to take care of while working away at the next headache.

Once upon a time the Strip was going to expand (Glenn Schaeffer used to brag about how MRG owned a bunch of land around Mandalay Bay for almost a mile), but it seems the latest Wynn-volution (and I don't blame him for this, just this darn 'follow the leader' business everyone does when he does something) is to just tear down old legacy properties that have more land than they know what to do with and put something MGM Grand sized down on that property.

Posted by detroit1051

Andrew, regarding New Year's in Las Vegas. I read in the December issue of Las Vegas Life that seven Strip hotels will participate in an eight-minute fireworks dislay: MGM Grand, Planet Hollywood, Flamingo, Venetian, TI, Circus Circus and Stratosphere.

I thought the welcome sign was in the same spot it had always been in, just south of the Klondike. it was still there the 1st week in November.
I think the developers of Town Square (I think that's the name}, the retail and office developement south of Mandaly Bay, paid for the left turn overpass on LVB. Northbound to westbound, it cost them over a million, but made traffic easier. MGM is paying all costs to extend Harmon from LVB over I-15, going through CityCenter, and building and staffing a fire station there as well. Companies spending billions have to work on all areas of risk and success, including airport and gasoline capacity, before they move forward. Private business, even in Nevada, pays taxes and employs taxpayers. Government never works as fast as private business. When you have the super growth that Las Vegas has seen, keeping up becomes a problem. I think they have good leadership on both sides in Clark County, (Moreso than Carson City) and they will work it out.