The Las Vegas strip at night is spectacular,
the lights, the fountains, crowds of visitors.
But the Las Vegas strip in the day is just okay.
It's kind of like when they turn the lights on
in Space Mountain or something.
It's a very uneven mix of styles and quality,
with a ridiculously wide 12 lane,
count of 12 lane urban arterial running through the center.
The streets and cross streets are so wide
that most have to be traversed using pedestrian overpasses.
Now, I know that most people don't come to Las Vegas
for a quiet daytime stroll along Las Vegas Boulevard,
unless they're a nerdy city planner
making their first visit to the city like me.
But still, it doesn't take an expert to see
that this road could work better for visitors,
hotel staff, and anyone who thinks it's a hassle
to ride an escalator to cross a street.
And besides, it's not just about simply fixing a street.
What if the Las Vegas strip could become a model
for urban transportation
and even an attraction into its own right?
That would be pretty cool.
I'm back home from Las Vegas,
only about $20 poorer from the slot machines,
and I think the strip has a ton of potential.
In this video, we're gonna redesign that roadway together.
I'll share with you the process
I used to develop initial concepts,
a process you can borrow when using your own communities.
So, let's get started after the bike bell.
(bell ringing)
Where do we start?
I like to start by defining the problem.
What's wrong with the street, block, city, area,
region, neighborhood that you're interested in?
The best way to discover a problem
is by using the space and checking your gut.
Do you feel safe there? Comfortable?
Is there something missing that you wish existed?
I pretty clearly stated the problem
with the strip in the intro
and this opinion came from walking several hours
along the strip.
I don't think I'm alone in my opinion either.
Many people hop from one casino to another,
but the distances between casinos are long
and the pedestrian environment is a mixed bag.
There is decent bus transit, but when I tried to use it
there were some bunching issues and full buses.
At this point in the process,
I'm not yet proposing a solution.
I don't know if these access issues
could be remedied by better bike lanes, better walkability,
more transit, or something else entirely.
But we know that there's a problem
and that's a good place to start.
The next step is to see if this is a known problem
with a forthcoming solution.
I like to read existing plans for the area
to see if planners have identified the problem
I've identified.
In the case of the strip,
I know that is not actually in the city of Las Vegas,
but in the unincorporated communities
of Clark County, Nevada.
A quick visit to Google shows that the county
is reconstructing sections of Las Vegas Boulevard.
The projects include water and sewer main replacements,
road resurfacing, lighting improvements,
and some pedestrian crossing upgrades.
There's no grand reimagining of the strip in the works.
The next place the check
is the area's regional transportation plan.
Each metropolitan region in the United States
is required to have one to receive federal funding
for transportation projects.
This document will give us a look ahead
to see if any new projects are planned for the strip.
Access 2050 is the name of the plan,
and according to its list of projects,
there's nothing transformative in the works,
except for an offhanded mention
that The Boring Company's underground people mover
could expand.
No, thanks.
One piece of information I did come across
during the process was traffic counts for the strip.
The road sees about 60,000 vehicles per day.
This is only somewhat more than
the 50,000 pedestrians per day.
And if you add transit passengers to this equation,
drivers and passengers and personal vehicles
may not even be a majority of strip road users
despite getting a majority of the space.
We've identified a problem and the regional plans
don't offer much of a solution.
The next step is to do an existing condition survey,
essentially a site visit.
We should use all five of our senses
to really understand the space as deeply as possible.
It'll help us devise a solution.
This is when I started taking dozens
of video clips of everything that interested me
about the physical landscape of the strip.
I noticed the massive intersections,
with multiple turn lanes in every direction.
The pedestrian overpasses
complete with elevators and escalators.
The casino entrances that opened up onto the strip.
The limited wayfinding signage
and the condition of the bus stops along the corridor.
I spent about five hours visiting the strip
and looking at it in as much detail as I could.
It wasn't a perfect representative sample.
I didn't see it on a holiday, or a weekend,
or a special event like a football game.
I was a visitor and that was my perspective.
Locals, hotel staff, and frequent travelers to Vegas
will likely have a different
and more well-rounded conception of the space.
Now, I don't think anyone would argue
that the Las Vegas Strip isn't a unique space.
I honestly can't think of any other place
in the United States like it.
Reno's casinos are downtown
more like Las Vegas is Fremont Street casinos.
Outside of the United States,
Monte Carlo is clearly a European space,
completely unlike the suburban strip in Vegas.
Macau feels similar in scale,
though it's more dense and urban overall.
Many of Macau's casinos lined the Avenida da Amizade.
What is that street like?
I've never been there, so I'm relying on Google Maps
but the street scale looks familiar
but I'm seeing more public transit.
There's also some green space at the center of the street
but the sidewalks seem narrower
and less accommodating than the strips.
Where does all this information lead us?
How do we develop an urban design solution to the problem
we've identified using all the information we've collected?
It's not a straightforward process to be honest
but it's about finding connections
between all of that data
that point us in the right direction.
The overall length of the strip
is a fact that stuck with me.
It's over four miles long.
Other casino strips like the one in Macau are shorter,
but they still have more mass transit than Las Vegas.
Let's try this for a solution.
A bus rapid transit system
running through the center of Las Vegas Boulevard.
Bus rapid transit systems often use articulated buses,
collect fares off the bus, and run in dedicated lanes
making them a cost effective alternative
to heavy rail metro systems and even light rail systems.
Instead of the unfortunately named Deuce bus service
that exists now, the design option that probably fits best
includes dedicated lanes and center median stations.
This leaves the curbside lane for cars
to pull into casino hotels
and shortens the crossing distance for pedestrians,
making it essentially two separate crossings.
Stations should be spaced
about three quarters of a mile apart
or 1.2 kilometers apart.
Here's one option that seems to provide convenient access
for most major destinations
for Mandalay Bay all the way up to downtown.
Bus rapid transit can move a lot of people very quickly
through a corridor on dedicated lanes.
Systems in other parts of the world
can move 15,000 to 40,000 passengers per hour per direction.
A system like this on the strip will provide enough capacity
as Las Vegas continues to grow.
This bus system will undoubtedly take cars off the road
which gives a whole new set of benefits.
The street will be quieter,
better on the lungs, and more safe.
There won't be a need for these omnipresent fences
that keep people corralled and separated from the roadway.
It'll begin to feel more like a vibrant space
than two sidewalks separated by a car road.
Good transit systems also linked to other transit lines
to create a full network.
One conspicuous transit line is the Las Vegas Monorail.
The monorail's primary function from what I can tell
is to connect strip resort hotels to the convention center.
It's not meant to help people circulate up and down
the boulevard, so there's no real duplication here.
The Mandalay Bay Station
could be a convenient transfer point between the lines.
If you'd like to hear more
about that mode of transportation,
you can check out a video I did on the Las Vegas Monorail
over on Nebula.
This is the third monorail I've written for this channel
and it might be my favorite.
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