Comments on: Transportation Crisis

By: J. Clark/Chastn.Neigh.Pres.

J. Clark/Chastn.Neigh.Pres. — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 09:54:57 +0000

No additional funding for road building.
The RTCommission “entity” electeds who sit here have approved a variety of “pork” routes between Henderson & LV,
THE Springs Preserve because of a Bear Paw Poppy (sure!), sound/odor walls 20 years after freeways are built, to name a few. Cruise much of the heart of the city and note residents waiting at bus stops with no seats, no shelter,even in open desert for years–ck. Washington & Jones,etc.
We agree that Jacob Snow is not producing a fraction of his salary which was,phenominally increased despite government pleas for “shoes w/o holes”. Actually he does do well at smoke screens and how can this transportation extension of the Clark County Commission use our taxes for billboards and media commercials to promote tax increases for porkbarrell projects!

By: don parker

don parker — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:07:30 +0000

Yes, there is a solution: Let me be the first to offer all those who are “stuck here” and wish they lived someplace else, a free ride out of town.

By: James Nance

James Nance — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 16:31:46 +0000

I have lived in Philadelphia, Atlanta and Charlotte, NC. I have visited extensively San Francisco, New York, Boston and Washington DC. Las Vegas does not have a subway nor train system. Despite this, the Las Vegas Valley traffic system does well during rush hour when compared to these cities for those who travel by automobiles. For every nightmare story about getting to work in Las Vegas, you will need to multiply that story by 3 to get close to the nightmares in these other cities.

Every five seconds, someone is saying we need to increase spending because sector XX is in crisis. Obviously, we cannot dramatically increase spending in every one of these sectors unless we double/triple the sales tax or institute a personal income tax. Thank God, neither of these things will ever pass. So we can probably increase more money on something a little bit each year. I do not think we need to spend those precious small increases on roads. My vote is public safety. That is more prisons, more money in court system and more cops. I think putting money in Education is throwing money away because it is a highly inefficient system. I think Education system needs a dramatic change…not more money. My second priority is the Mental Health System. My third priority is Child Welfare programs.

As for roads, I think we need to get better engineers or better engineer consultants. They make too many mistakes that need to fixed later which waste money.

By: Jim Brown

Jim Brown — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 06:49:41 +0000

Anyone who has driven in this town for more than a couple years, and anyone who has taken the bus more than 10 miles, knows the RTC is not doing a decent job with anything related to transportation in this area.

The bus rides are nightmares of transfers and waits at dangerous bus stops. The traffic signals keep your average speed on surface streets to less than 25 mph outside of rush hour, and more like 9 mph during rush hour.

So, recognizing the RTC is doing nothing of value, why hasn’t someone started a campaign to fire them all. Looks to me like they’re getting ready for the ax with their increased severance package, so lets give it to them and get someone in here that knows what they are doing.

By the way, don’t look for help from the Review Journal, they seem to love the RTC, just look at the great multi-million dollar exit to MLK in the spaghetti bowl. If the RJ building wasn’t located right there, you think they would have spent 10 cents for an exit to MLK?

By: Jerry

Jerry — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:54:12 +0000

I was on the RTC’s Citizens Committee for three years and I finally had to resign in frustration. It is like a Chinese fire drill or bailing the Pacific with an eight ounce glass. I truly believe that Jacob Snow is working WAY over his head. RTC needs a director that is capable of making transportation decisions and not someone that sits at his computer running the thesaurus looking for big words to cloud an issue. A Director that can run RTC by direction. Not meaningless meeting after meeting deciding whether to commission another out side study to study the last study. All of the corrective steps that I have heard or read about, including the ones in this blog, have been discussed years ago. No action has been taken on most of them. In 2002 we gave a ¼% sales tax increase to help prevent gridlock. What we got instead was a much larger higher paid RTC doing a lot more nothing than before. One of the suggested changes is a one way grid system. That would be the least expensive and the quickest system to be operational. Not to run competition with itself is another. Look at the Max system, what a boondoggle that is. MAX busses cost one MILLION each. Who cares, it is not their money right? They did get the free trips to England and France and all of the puff that went with it. Each one of those double deck busses costs $553,000.00. No matter, they will all be running around nearly empty until something is done to improve service and make the people want to use public transportation.

By: Larry Sigurdson

Larry Sigurdson — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 18:12:17 +0000

Designating US Highway 95 as Interstate 11 doesn’t require any new taxes. To become a part of the federal Interstate system, the requirements are requests by the affected State Departments of Transportation and authorization by the US Congress, directing the US Department of Transportation to make the change.

The 2009 Federal Transportation Authorization Act now be developed in the House and Senate Transportation Committees could include this provision along with other Interstate Freeway needs for the Western States.

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 16:42:27 +0000

Don’t we ever have any solutions beyond more taxes? If it hasn’t worked so far, do you think the same people can fix it with more money? We always hear complaints with no solution. If we leave it to the Government, the solution will be: just send us more money until we ask for still more money. Our citizens never seem to learn.