RTC crew travels for recon on stadiums

TRaiders won’t kick off in Las Vegas until 2020, but it isn’t too early to figure out how to get fans to the stadium.

Officials on the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada are hoping to learn a few lessons by taking road trips to several stadiums across the country.

“I’m a firm believer in going out and touching and feeling the experience so we can learn from other cities on how they did it best,” RTC General Director Tina Quigley said. “We want to know their successes, their challenges and what they would have done differently so we can make sure we have the best system available in Las Vegas.”

It turns out that public transit plays a pretty big role on game day.

During her travels, Quigley learned that roughly 25 percent of Atlanta Falcons fans take light rail to football games at Mercedes-benz Stadium, while more than 30 percent of Oakland Raiders fans hop aboard the Bay Area’s subway system for home games.

Las Vegas does not have a rail system, and it appears there won’t be much room for parking at the new stadium. As a result, the RTC is focusing on increased bus transit on game days, similar to the Golden Knights Express buses that ferry hockey fans to T-mobile Arena.

And given the heavy focus on tourism in Las Vegas, expect throngs of out-of-town football fans to make a quick escape to Mccarran International Airport following a Sunday game, RTC Deputy General Manager M.J. Maynard said.

“It’s not going to be just Las Vegas residents going to that stadium,” Maynard said. “There will be a lot of movement after the game to the Strip for people who want to stay longer, but there will also be those people who want to fly back home because they have a job to get to on Monday morning.”

Just as the baseball season was winding down and football was ramping up in October, RTC officials traveled to Atlanta to exam

WARRIOR

ine traffic patterns at the Falcons’ Mercedes Benz Stadium and Turner Field, former home of the Braves.

It cost $6,645 to send Quigley, Maynard and five other RTC staffers on a three-day trip to Atlanta, where they learned different methods on how to quickly move pedestrians out of both stadiums following a game.

A luxury suite at Turner Field was converted into a traffic management center, similar to one already operated by the RTC, that allowed transportation officials to remotely control traffic signals surrounding the baseball stadium.

“I think we’ll have an opportunity to do that at the new stadium, and it will do well there,” Maynard said.

Quigley, Maynard and one other RTC staffers spent $950 to fly up to Oakland and return the same day on Dec. 3 to observe traffic patterns around the Raiders’ current home. Maynard said she was “stunned” by the fact that roughly one-third of fans arrived by public transit.

“2020 is going to be here before we know it,” Maynard said. “I think that understanding the potential success of effectively moving pedestrians and vehicles around the stadium starts now.”

‘Right on schedule’

Karl from North Las Vegas appears upset that crews are taking too long to complete the widening of Interstate 15 between Craig Road and Speedway Boulevard and wanted an update.

The $33.8 million project is running “right on schedule” and should be finished by mid-2018, said Tony Illia, a spokesman for the Nevada Department of Transportation. Construction started last October, with crews working five days a week from 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

When completed, that 5-mile stretch of freeway will be widened to three travel lanes in each direction, Illia said. Plans also call for brighter