[IMBY]

Before I left Las Vegas almost 3 years ago, I attended the RTC meetings on the scheduled light rail line from the Airport to downtown & UMC via Maryland. They were super hopeful it would become a reality. And? What happened in a city that's stuck in the 1960's and can't move forward?

You would think that those visiting from other major cities that have light rail trains waiting for them outside their Airports, would scratch their heads in wonder, why there isn't a train from McCarran Airport to the Strip and Fremont? Wouldn't it be terrific if we could get the tourists to do a boycott of Las Vegas, until they put a train from the Airport to downtown? Believe me, if that happened, construction would start tomorrow and not the next day!

I fault Mayor Goodman for part of that failure. In Phoenix, when the light rail expansion to the West was being threatened by a vote, the Blue Mayor of Phoenix went door to door, one event after another, to make sure people voted for the funding for the expansion of the light rail system to the west of Phoenix.

And Mayor Goodman? Does she even care? Or how about a Clark County Commission member having gone to bat for that light rail line!

I've heard it too often on this light rail debates in other cities: Not enough density for a rail line.

What they can't imagine is the construction that would eventually follow at every light rail stop from the Airport to DT.

Gee whiz! Even in Tucson, much, much smaller than Las Vegas, they were able to put in a light rail line/streetcar from the U of A campus to Menlo Park to the west, and it's spawned all kinds of apartment construction along the way.