The week: Reflections on Las Vegas.
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Las Vegas is s city of the imagination: we all have a sense of what it’s like. We’ve been there, through the movies, ads, images, songs and words.
Sure it’s fake – of a very high order. Yes, it pushes boundaries; excess is the point. (“What happens in Vegas …” etc.) . This is where the tourist comes to explore the outer limits of American popular culture, where the ups and downs are higher and lower than anywhere else. And where Motordom prevails, and always has.
But they’ve got a little problem.
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Too many pedestrians.
In the last couple of decades, the Las Vegas Strip has seen an almost complete reconstruction of the classic desert resorts associated with the Rat Pack, Liberace, Elvis and the Mob. Ten of them – the Dunes, the Sands, the Stardust and more – have been imploded, to be replaced by a dozen or so massive hotel/casinos with three to four thousand rooms each.
What was once this:
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Is now this:
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But my guess is that Las Vegas thinks it’s only a bigger version of this:
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More urban, yes, but still a town to be experienced by car, preferably a stretch limo, where the traffic has to be kept moving 24/7.
So they’ve widened the Strip to ten lanes, removed any curbside parking, prevented any crosswalks at major intersections, constructed overhead walkways for pedestrians, and prohibited taxis from stopping when hailed. And of course, no special treatment for transit, certainly nothing that would require a separate lane.
This is Motordom Triumphant.
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And it’s failing.
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But it does, apparently, include double decker buses
Looks more like a coach bus?
@Stephen: Those double decker buses are called the Deuce. Providing the local service they do on the congested roadway, are a horribly slow way of getting around the Strip once you’re on the bus. I wouldn’t say the demand even warrants double decker buses because the Deuce runs just every 15 minutes. I think the second deck is just for sightseeing reasons, and I would think that the Deuce isn’t treated as a serious Strip transportation option. Here’s an info PDF: http://www.rtcsnv.com/wp-content/themes/rtc/pdf/12/Deuce%2809-30-12%29.pdf. There’s an ACE BRT (express) line operating on the strip, but it seems to go unnoticed because I rarely saw those buses on the strip (though I did outside the strip – and the demand is pretty decent for a 15-minute service bus, you can see standing passengers in the late evening hours). http://www.rtcsnv.com/wp-content/themes/rtc/pdf/12/SDX%2809-30-12%29.pdf
The “monorail” (if you have even heard of it) does not really service the strip and thanks to the poor routing, it goes unnoticed even more easily. It’s not cheap to ride it either.
My guess (incl. from my own experience) is that a lot of tourists into Las Vegas rent a car and use that to get around. If there were a proper, recognizable, affordable-to-ride high capacity rapid transit line down the middle of the strip – with a proper airport and downtown link – a lot of the congestion on the strip could be addressed over time. It’d make Las Vegas a more affordable place to visit as a tourist, improve tourism, and generate demand for more hotels – and the rapid transit line would more than handle the new demand. Some might say it’d look ugly, but with 8-10 lanes and triple left turn lanes (yes – TRIPLE left turn lanes!) down Las Vegas boulevard, always congested…. it can’t be better as-is. This isn’t like Manila, where uncontrollably high density and a poor country are causing a legitimate problem and creating many roads in Manila that could sort of be like the Strip. This is all a result of simply bad decisions.
Oh, something that might affirm my point…. Las Vegas’ airport has this off-site and absolutely HUGE rent-a-car facility (I have never seen anything like it, it’s just sad) which I have been to… consider it a testament to my point about many tourists renting cars to get around there.
Agreed that most people rent a car – the rates are cheap and they can drive to the outlet malls and to Zion or the Grand Canyon. And air conditioning in the summer.
On the strip, there’s also a couple of private (casino-owned) cable-car shuttles – one from Mandalay Bay through Luxor to I think Excalibur and another (or is it the same one extended?) that runs through the new City Centre project.
One thing that pedestrians soon find in Vegas – that 40 storey hotel “over there” isn’t quite as close as you night think. There’s a bit of a misperception of scale issue for most people, who often find that the building within sight is really over a mile away (a long walk in 40C heat).
Being a pedestrian on the strip is the most insulting experience – so many people actually want to walk (and linger & people watch) and it’s a constant up-over-down, up-over-down journey to get over the cross-streets. Will put any urbanist into a rage instantly, guaranteed. Seriously maddening. Maybe it’s intentional – you kind of do need a stiff drink after attempting to walk more than 2 blocks.
if Being a pedestrian on the strip is the most insulting experience, then why so many people actually want to walk (and linger & people watch) there?
But what is the metric to define success or failure?
if too much foot and car traffic is synonym of failure, then the Las Vegas strip is a failure …a bit like Granville island,…Urbanists will praise Jack Poole Plaza, the leg in boot or the Nelson#Mainland square as a testimony of successful places.
That is the problem of “disneyland” urbanism where car traffic is seen only as an evil.
Obviously, the Champs Elysee, with 10 lanes of clogged traffic (as the strip) and overcrowded sidewalk qualify also for an urbanistic failure of epic proportion…
But well, fortunately some people disagree, and don’t see traffic as a problem but rather as a adding value to the urban experience.
That was the sense of this post :
http://voony.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/an-avenue-in-neuilly/ (on the Champs elysee corridor)
as well as this one:
http://voony.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/impressionists-on-the-parisian-boulevards/
(…Yes traffic was existing before the motor car).
May be, more similar to the Vegas strip,
In Toronto, North York Center, has always been met by nothing else than contempt by the local urbanists nomenklatura
Yonge street crossing it in its heart is crazy busy..The urbanist will still don’t like it. but people flock there and call it the second downtown of Toronto for good reason….
The mayor of North York behind this North York center, became mayor of Toronto after amalgation in 1998, then it opened Yonge#Dundas square…the urbanists don’t like it too, but people flock there…
What the urbanists like?
Voony it’s an insult because they force the pedestrians to go up and OVER the car traffic to cross any street (have you been there?). The _people_ are forced to go out of their way to yield to the 150horsepower engined vehicles. That’s crazy. The actual street frontage is surprisingly in line with what urbanists call for for walkability: shops fronting the sidewalk, detailed design features, visual interest…. they just built it alongside their highway and then try to maintain traffic flow so at every cross street you effectively slap all the pedestrians in the face to remind them that car is king.
I’m not saying it should be a car free space (not sure how you even got that from my comment), but you don’t force pedestrians to make a 10min detour (and create huge accessibility problems) to go up and over EVERY cross street. That is insulting. They’ve created a relatively walkable stretch and then and made it maddening to walk more than 2 blocks.
To your main point – while car traffic may animate streets to some degree (I’ve enjoyed many a pedestrian street with zero cars) – you can achieve that without having a _10_ lane highway next to your vibrant pedestrian area, I don’t think a 10 lane highway is ‘animating’, personally. Though I suspect you are right – that so many people are walking because the thought of getting in a car and dealing with 10 lanes of traffic on the strip to go 2 casinos down is even crazier than the crazy pedestrian experience. So in that sense, their insane road design has contributed to increased pedestrian traffic. yay?
Having pedestrian crossings at grade would be unworkable because:
– the time for the slowest old person to cross 10 lanes would be too long for a regular traffic cycle and cars would back up significantly.
– tourists and crowds “en masse” do not obey pedestrian signals (think of post-game hockey crowds) (and especially when drunk at night).
beach650, you get me right.
About the pedestrian space, I didn’t infer that of your post, but of the general urbanists or wanabee urbanist thinking (a good example of the type of thinking I am thinking off is provided here.
That said, I certainly agree that the strip is not pedestrian scaled, but you could say similar thing of the triplet Concord / Champs ELysees / Place de l’Etoile (accessible only by underground tunnel). That is, as I have mentioned in one of my post (http://voony.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/geography-of-paris-squares-or-plazas/) those place are “worshipping place” (State / culture) designed to overwhelm you… not too make you feeling cosy…
You could say the same of the National Mall in WashingtonDC.
And eventually the strip can fall in this category.
I have been there my fair share and I can attest that the description of the pedestrian Fremont street in this blog is also spot on: it is a depressing place people gonna stroll since there but not gonna want to linger & people watch there: tourist simply prefer the strip…in despite to be much less pedestrian friendly.
The main point I want to make is that the strip should be an humbling experience for any urbanist: It defy all the pre conceived idea one can have on successful place making, and still, like it or not: in despite of all the well pointed issue, it simply works !
To reuse a definition of Jan Gehl (Cities for People), : “City life is a relative concept. It isn’t the number of people that counts but the feeling that the place is populated & being used.”
Don’t you think that the strip is populated and used? that in the end is what’s matter