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Getting Around Las Vegas

May 4, 2010 By

Transportation in Las Vegas is centered around the use of private cars, but there is more to it than that, with everything from trolleys to a monorail. More than 4 million cars and 30 million airline passengers come to Las Vegas each year on 1,000 flights a day, and nearly five million people make use of the local  bus service. Once you are living in Las Vegas you will soon learn to avoid the Strip traffic, and if possible using the roads during the busier times of 7am to 9am and 4pm to 6pm. The city does not suffer the same levels of congestion as many other metropolises, but new infrastructure is needed to support growth. Back in 1975 the Nevada Department of Transportation predicted that in 20 years there would be 48,500 vehicles a year using the I-95, but by 1995 there more like 150,000. In total Las Vegans make more than a million trips per day and this is projected to nearly double in the next decade.

The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (RTC) is the transit authority and the transportation-planning agency for Southern Nevada. It used to be known as the Citizens Area Transit (CAT), and it has an extensive bus network throughout the Valley, which you can find at: http://www.rtcsouthernnevada.com/about/index.cfm The network runs 20 hours a day, and every 15 minutes at peak hours on the busiest routes.

Taxis can be tricky for locals since the drivers tend to stick to the tourist funnel of the airport and Strip hotels. This is not New York and you can’t just flag a cab down, also when you phone ahead to make a booking you should check to see whether the firm accepts credit cards or not. Some of the taxi firms operating in the city are:

  • Ace: (702) 736-8383
  • Deluxe Taxicab Service: (702) 567-0557
  • Desert Cab Company: (702) 386-9102
  • Henderson Taxi Company: (702) 384-232
  • Lucky Cab Company: (702) 477-7555
  • Nellis Cab Company: (702) 248-1111
  • Western Cab Company: (702) 736-8000
  • Whittlesea: (702) 384-6111
  • Yellow Cab: (702) 873-2000

The Strip itself is serviced by a number of options, including a trolley which takes the back streets to stop at each of the casinos. There are three different routes that you can take: the Vegas Strip route from the Stratosphere to Mandalay Bay; the South route from Mandalay Bay to Grand View; and the Downtown Las Vegas loop route from the downtown bus terminal to the outdoor outlet mall. An alternative to the trolley is the Las Vegas Monorail, which covers a four mile route behind the Strip from MGM Grand to the Sahara.

Whilst these options are all well and good the reality is that you will be driving yourself most places once you settle in Las Vegas. If you are not keen on driving then this is not the place for you. New Nevada residents must obtain their driver license within 30 days, and register vehicles at the same time or within 60 days, whichever is soonest. Those that fail to do so face a $1,000 fine. When you register your vehicle make sure that you have:

  • Most recent registration
  • Out-of-state license plates
  • Nevada Evidence of Insurance Card
  • Nevada Emissions Vehicle Inspection Report (smog check) if needed
  • Nevada Vehicle Inspection Certificate (“VIN check” done at the DMV office)
  • Certificate of Title (if ownership is changing. If not changing ownership, the owner has the option of retaining the out-of-state title.)

It is required that you secure liability insurance from a Nevada-licensed carrier in the exact name(s) which will be on the registration and title. If your insurance is with a large, national company, you must notify the company that you have moved to Nevada. Out-of-state insurance is not accepted. The DMV will verify this electronically with your insurer, and there is a fine of $250 for those who do not maintain Nevada liability insurance.

The smog test, or Nevada Emission Control Certificate can be obtained from any authorized service station. If you don’t pass then you need to undertake repairs until you do.

To get the driver’s license you will need to jump through some administrative hoops and pass a written test on the laws related to driving in Nevada. The test is pretty easy if you do some study of the “Nevada Driver’s Handbook. You should be a Nevada resident and provide a Nevada street address when you apply for the driver’s license. The documents you need to take are some proof of your name and age such as a birth certificate or passport, your out-of-state driver’s license, and proof of social security number.

For the latest information on all your licensing needs you should visit the DMV web site: http://www.dmvnv.com/newresident.htm

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Las Vegas and the 90s Boom

March 23, 2010 By

The Mirage Hotel opened on 22nd November 1989, and the Strip has never been the same since. Whilst Las Vegas Boulevard had seen mega-resorts before, such as Kirk Kerkorian’s International and MGM, a young Steve Wynn raised the stakes with his Mirage and started a trend that transformed 1990s Las Vegas.

Steve Wynn’s Vegas career started in the 1960s when he took a minority stake in the Frontier Hotel and made a dollar and a cent as a liquor distributor. It was as manager of Downtown’s Golden Nugget in the 1970s that he really cut his teeth in the casino business. He went on to build a Golden Nugget in Atlantic City, and next came the Mirage.

The Mirage is a 3,000 room casino hotel, notable for a man-made volcano that stops people in their tracks as they walk past. As soon as it was launched the hotel started grossing a million bucks a day, and Wynn’s reputation for delivering outstanding product was cemented. The high quality of service, design and build quality are what set the Mirage apart from the casinos that had gone before it.

William Bennett is another important figure in 1990s Las Vegas. After buying Jay Sarno’s Circus Circus and turning it into a cash cow he went on to build the 4,000 room Excalibur. Aimed at a lower market segment than that Wynn was chasing, it became an instant hit when it opened seven months after the Mirage.

At this stage in the Strip’s evolution it was time for Kirk Kerkorian to step back into the fray, and he did so in style by building a new 5005 room MGM Grand. This one billion dollar project opened in 1993 and went after all market segments with success. At the same time as Kerkorian was working on MGM, Wynn was building Treasure Island, and Bennett was developing the Luxor. Between them these three men were transforming the Strip. The tail end of 1993 was dramatic indeed: 9th October, Luxor opens; 27th October, Treasure Island opens; 18th December, MGM Grand opens.

These hotels recognized that Las Vegas visitors were no longer gambling-focused men, but families looking for entertainment of all types. With this new broader market to tap, new hotels continued to be built through the 1990s: Excalibur (1990), Rio (1990), Luxor (1993), MGM Grand (1993), Treasure Island (1993), Hard Rock (1995), Monte Carlo (1996), Stratosphere (1996), New York, New York (1997), Bellagio (1998), Mandalay Bay (1999), Paris (1999), Venetian (1999), new Aladdin (2000). 1990s Las Vegas. What a decade.

Related articles: Las Vegas Strip Condos

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Reading the Tealeaves of Casino Revenue

March 14, 2010 By

Looking at the January 2010 figures for gaming revenue in January 2010 we see that the Silver State is down 3.2% on last year, and the Strip is down 3%. In analyzing these numbers one has to take into account that in January 2009 the whole of the Chinese New Year was covered, but this year it spills over into February. However, there is still no sign that a growth in the tourism dollar is going to ignite the Las Vegas real estate market.

The figures released by the Gaming Control Board show that gaming revenues on the Las Vegas Strip were $495 million in January, compared to $510.4 million in the same month a year ago. Downtown took a less severe hit, and was down just 2.1%, whilst North Las Vegas was down 0.2%. We could hypothesize that this is because the Strip has the biggest exposure to Asian tourists and that February will give us hope, but on the other hand Mesquite is down 10.4% and Laughlin took a 14% hit on the same month a year ago.

The casino industry recovery is something that developers desperately want to see, but even with Chinese New Year straddling January and February this year there is not much to get excited about. The American economy has dug itself such a massive hole that it has to climb rather than jumps out – are these January figures a foothold?

The January 2009 Nevada gaming revenues were a 15 per cent drop on the previous year, so at least the rate of decline is slowing. But it is not an even slowdown, with slot machine volume down 9.9 percent versus table games at 2.2 percent. It is high stakes baccarat that has been propping up the Strip – revenues if $107 million were collected in January.  Unfortunately the real estate industry is not going to be rehabilitated off the back of some baccarat whales.

Nevada collected $59.7 million in gaming taxes for the period, compared with nearly $47.1 million a year ago, according to the Gaming Control Board.

Collections were helped by the repayment of outstanding debts associated with high-end customers.

“Much of the money collected came from markers owed for the New Year’s weekend,” said Control Board Tax and License Division Chief Frank Streshley. “January was one of our strongest months for tax collections in some time.”

For the first eight months of the fiscal year, Nevada has collected $406.3 million in gaming taxes, a decline of 1.6 percent compared with $412.9 million collected for the same time period in fiscal year 2009.

Streshley said the tax collections were trending ahead of predictions made by the Nevada’s Economic Forum for the fiscal year. The forum’s panel thought gaming tax collections would be down 2.5 percent for fiscal 2010 compared with fiscal 2009.

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