Ten Things Las Vegas Desperately Needs to Do

Las Vegas is growing again.

According to reports, the city and surrounding area added 100,000 new residents within just the past year.  This news is both good and bad.

It’s good because local property values, which took the biggest hit in the nation right after the 2008 economic crisis, are inching closer back to the break-even point for many homeowners, who relocated here and then found themselves on the wrong end of upside-down mortgages.  It’s also a symbol of economic vibrancy, sure to entice businesses currently based elsewhere to move to Las Vegas, which has a plentiful supply of affordable labor.

It’s bad too.  Las Vegas doesn’t really need any more residents.  Its limited resources — mostly a diminishing water supply — are already stretched perilously thin.  Lake Mead is at its lowest level ever and the problem is getting worse.  Air quality continues to deteriorate.  And local traffic is a mess.  Las Vegas doesn’t need any more cars on the streets or people struggling to make ends meet.  It’s already got plenty of that.

Here are ten things Las Vegas should do which will improve the quality of life for most residents and make the city a far more attractive place to visit:

1.  Stop releasing federal land for new development — Las Vegas has plenty of lands available for commercial and residential development.  Yet, under intense pressure from developers (most of them based out-of-state), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) continues to release federal land in the surrounding areas to speculators and developers.  Unfortunately, much of the latest developments pose a serious threat to the picturesque Red Rock Canyon area located on the city’s far west side.  A ten-year “land freeze” would force developers to invest more heavily in urban areas (inner city) which desperately need more jobs and opportunities.

2.  Expand and improve the Las Vegas monorail — Whoever signed off on or had anything to do with the planning of the current monorail system should be banished from the city.  It’s a disgrace — one of the most abominable mass transit projects ever built.  First, it’s ridiculously expensive to ride ($5 for a one-way ticket, and $14 for a 24-hour pass).  Contrast passenger fare costs with other major U.S. cities which are usually no more than a few dollars.  Worse, the route deviates off the Strip and isn’t convenient for most visitors.  But the biggest crime is the monorail not extending all the way to and from McCarran International Airport and Downtown.  The solution is to extend ridership to the airport, and then downtown.  Moreover, lower fares would probably create more net revenue since more riders would take the monorail rather than taxis.  As it stands now, the Las Vegas monorail is a white elephant and a symbol of poor planning and gross mismanagement.  Let’s start over again and do it right this time.

3.  Ban all commercial vehicles from the Las Vegas Strip — Have you seen these giant trucks which are nothing more than huge billboards trolling up and down the Las Vegas Strip 24-hours a day?  They’re about as useful as bad cholesterol.  Billboard truck drivers are instructed to drive slowly back and forth, more so at the busiest times, adding to what’s already a severe traffic problem, noxious air pollution, and other problems caused by needless congestion.  Not only should these worthless vehicles be banned from the city, but all commercial traffic should also be diverted to alternative routes located on both sides of the main thoroughfare — namely Koval/Paradise to the east and Frank Sinatra/Industrial to the west.  It’s not 1975 anymore.  The city has grown beyond the capacity to accommodate all the traffic that’s here.  So, let’s start establishing some priorities.  City planners must begin imposing restrictions on which vehicles should be permitted on the city’s busiest boulevard.  Ban all trucks and billboard pests.

4.  Build a new sports stadium north of downtown — Sports stadiums are controversial.  They’re not always an ideal allocation of public finances.  However, sports arenas and outdoor stadiums have most certainly spawned economic development and are (in many cities) a net gain for the local economy.  Las Vegas is the largest city in the nation (by far) without a modern outdoor sports arena.  By this, I mean a stadium that could accommodate sports such as football, baseball, and soccer as well as outdoor concerts.  UNLV desperately needs a new stadium.  The city must construct a venue if it’s to lure an existing spots franchise.  Finally, the only outdoor arena capable of holding large crowds is the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, an eyesore in an industrial area on the outer fringes of the city, hardly an appealing venue.  The ideal location for new a multi-purpose sports arena would be in the area to the north of downtown, where the minor league baseball stadium Cashman Field already exists.  Most of that is already city-owned land and would be relatively cheap and easy to build upon.  The renovation of downtown that’s currently underway (led by Zappo’s) would also give a new stadium an instant urban feel, where locals and visitors could walk from residential and commercial areas to events.  UNLV home football games would become the hottest ticket in town.  This would be even more so for a major league baseball franchise (and several clubs are losing money and could probably be enticed to relocate).

5.  Build and modernize federal highways connecting Las Vegas with both Los Angeles and Phoenix — This is largely a federal matter since interstates are built and maintained by the Department of Transportation.  Nevertheless, the current state of highways between Las Vegas and its closest big city neighbors is a disgrace.  No other cities anywhere in the nation with 2-million or more residents offer as poor roads as now exist between Las Vegas-Los Angeles and Las Vegas-Phoenix.  In fact, there is no direct route to and from Phoenix.  Travel anywhere else in the country and you’ll see modern roads between major cities with multiple lanes.  Yet, the highways connecting Las Vegas to its neighbors are pretty much the exact same highways that existed 40 years ago.  Nice job, Sen. Harry Reid.  Thanks for nothing.

6.  Create enterprise zones in economically-depressed areas — North Las Vegas is on the verge of collapse.  Other areas of the Las Vegas Valley are similarly depressed.  One viable economic strategy which has proven to be successful in many large American cities is the implementation of what’s called “Urban Enterprise Zones,” initially championed by the late Congressman Jack Kemp during the 1980s.  Enterprise zones provide tax incentives for developers to invest in blighted areas.  They may reconstitute city land for shared revenue projects with private industry.  Most of these areas are ignored and forgotten.  However, if a moratorium on new land development was imposed, investors and developers would be forced to move into urban areas, which desperately need a boost.  It’s important to note a lot of these projects complement one another.

7.  Prohibit panhandling at intersections — Begging at intersections has become a regional epidemic.  One can’t drive anywhere now without seeing a “homeless person” with a sign begging for money.  While many of these unfortunate people are victims of the hoax of unrestricted free-market capitalism, quite a few made very bad decisions in life (drug abuse, alcoholism) and are now paying the consequences.  Homelessness in Las Vegas will certainly continue and we need to start a debate as to what we should do about it.  So, let’s quit ignoring the problem.  This won’t be solved with open begging at intersections.  Vagrancy is bad for communities and is hardly the springboard needed by the poor to move into jobs or establish self-reliance.  What may be needed is a state income tax (or city tax perhaps) in order to institute a safety net for these desperate people.  In the meantime, we need to clear the streets of people who endanger themselves and others by standing in traffic and are a blight on the community.  Yes, I know — I’m starting to sound like former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

8.  Build more street tunnels under the Las Vegas Strip — The Desert Inn’s east-west underpass has arguably been the wisest initiative of urban-planning in many years.  Yet, despite its unquestionable success — which alleviates thousands of cars from being forced to cross Las Vegas Blvd. and tie up surrounding intersections — we’ve built no other tunnels since then, and that was 20 years ago!  Why not?  Nothing is even planned in the future, which means we’re likely to have the same transportation grid in a decade that we have now — only with lots more cars and people.  That’s highly irresponsible.  Las Vegas has proven to be an abomination of urban planning (there’s been little or no government leadership on this, until the last decade or so).  There’s absolutely no excuse for this.  After all, the land here is mostly flat and unrestricted.  There are no natural barriers, bays, or rivers, which normally impede local transportation systems.  For Las Vegas to continue having such a poor transportation infrastructure given virtually no logistical challenges is mind-boggling.

9. Add a medical school at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas — What I’m about to write is both staggering and shameful.  The entire state of Nevada has precisely one medical school.  That’s right — just one.  The fastest-growing sector of the national economy is severely stifled within our community, largely because of the medical establishment’s (American Medical Association) reprehensible stranglehold on the process of new prospects entering the medical field.  In essence, many medical professionals don’t want any competition.  They want fewer licensed professionals so they can maintain a monopoly over our health.  So, because we have so few medical schools pumping out new doctors, waiting times increase in offices and doctors spend less time with patients.  This is a travesty!  Solution:  MORE DOCTORS, MORE NURSES, MORE MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS.  Yet under the current system, prospective doctors have only one option in this entire state to get an education and obtain training, which is at the University of Nevada (Reno), located some 400 miles away.  How can a population center with two-million residents not have a medical school?  UPDATE:  It worked!  READ HERE

10.  Your turn — ???  What do you think?  What did I miss?