About 200 of my regular readers consider me kind of like Jesus of the Buses here because about 6 years ago, I was actually named a CAT Commuter of the Month because I once biked and used the bus to get to and from work and have been a staunch supporter of their Club Ride program.  These loyal readers hunted me down like a dog and often ask me about the bus system here as Transportation in my real profession.

The RTC’s Jacob Snow is without question, the very worst urban transit chief in the United States; he’s nothing but a politically hired hack!

The RTC’s Jacob Snow I am not, and if I had my druthers, I would fire him yesterday. He, like the SNWA’s Pat Mullroy, is not only grossly incompetent and nothing more than bobble-headed ‘yes man’ for the resorts, he continues to make bad decision after bad decision. Why else would we be spending tens of millions on Strip buses for tourists when CAT can’t even get Strip workers to the resorts on their own system?

Unbelievably, there are no ‘worker only’ bus options for the busiest jobs sector in Clark County, but that’s just fine with old Jake ‘the snake’ Snow.

Presently, CAT is utilizing the stylish double-decker buses on that route and most others, but despite their sleek appearance, those buses are rolling disasters waiting to happen as they are nearly impossible to evacuate the upper deck in an emergency—especially an emergency that would include a collision and explosion and fire from spilled fuel.

The RTC went with the double-decker death traps where if there is an accident fire, you have to jump more than ten feet into the flames below and break many bones, or broil to death above the flames.

There are kick out emergency windows and hatches on the roof requiring people to boost themselves to the roof, or jump out of the top deck into the flames below. Once those windows and roof hatches are opened, the upper deck would turn into a human broiler with an oxygen vacuum back draft drawing the flames and thick smoke upward from ground level at very rapid speed.

The RTC didn’t care at all about the broiler affect on their passengers.

This type of bus vehicle was never intended for heavy urban traffic—they are more for touring and sightseeing applications—so urban accident death tolls could be catastrophic in a fire because the super majority of the coaches’ seats are on the upper deck (53 lawful seats) and that doesn’t include those packed like sardines standing up there on the Strip route (it’s always in excess of 75 people up there on the Strip route!)

On the Strip route, the RTC has never enforced federal laws that limit passenger capacity and every day those buses are far in excess of 100% of capacity over six months of observations and the death tolls in a fire would be in the many dozens with so many unlawfully packed by CAT onto them.

Public buses should never be on the Strip in the first place as tourists should be piling into cabs and limos and not stealing public transit resources from the general public in a county the size of the entire state of Massachusetts!

Why are we even using public resources to transport tourists and subsidize the resorts when the private sector could handle all of them on their own?  The resorts pay nothing to the RTC for CAT services on the Strip.

We’ve really only had an urban bus system since 1983; that’s only 27 years where many eastern systems are far past the century mark, so you have to assess what the RTC has done in that brief time.

What the RTC has done is designed the worst public transit system in the United States, and contracted out the running of it to Paris based Veolia Transportation for a guaranteed over 1 billion per year with scant performance audits by people who even know how to audit Transportation!

Hundreds and hundreds of bus stops in the valley lack even a bench to sit on for waiting passengers; they still adhere to the ancient concept of ‘time stops’ on all but two routes, delaying the efficient movement of people which is what public transit is supposed to be about!

When a CAT driver doesn’t show for work and there are no more people on what they call their ‘extra board’, they simply cancel that run without any notice to the public.  Veolia goes through scores and scores of employees each and every month, firing drivers, mechanics, and office staff at will, without any accountability at all, to anyone!

That amounts to tens of millions of tax dollars wasted on training under the very worst union contract I have ever read.

Veolia cancels dozens of route runs each day in order to save and keep more money for itself and doesn’t report those cancellations to the RTC in a timely manner; and no one says a word about it either!

That amounts to hundreds of stranded CAT passengers each and every day and Veolia pocketing even more unaccounted for money!

Veolia Transportation treats all of its employees like human garbage and the Regional Transportation Commission and the Clark County Board of Commissioners doesn’t say a word about that either!

The local Amalgamated Transit Union is in flux and their local union chief will be voted out in their upcoming elections much like Teamsters 631 did recently and the transit system will be on a real strike here for the first time in its history when their current contract expires.  Past strike efforts weren’t successful, but the anger of the employees is something I have never seen and I was a union member myself for many years.  He has completely lost the confidence of his members by pushing things like Supervisors becoming drivers’ union members on Veolia’s orders—it is unheard of in any system in the US to include management under a driver contract—and the Para-Transit division being folded into the drivers’ contract.  The union head makes decisions behind closed doors with Veolia management and doesn’t share information willingly with his own board, much less his members.

Only a short time ago, bus drivers started at $7.50 per hour!  Today, it’s a still paltry $9.30 per hour despite that under federal law, bus drivers are equal to the captain of the Love Boat or a 747 in responsibility to passenger safety—it takes many months to reach even the $12 level when the state’s average wage is $14—and they are amongst the lowest paid drivers of any urban system in America, which begs the question ‘where are CAT’s resources going?’

Well,  aside from super bloated Veoila and RTC management salaries that far exceed national averages, they’ve recently opened up the opulent Sunset Station bus yard in the south central valley, leaving a few routes in North Las Vegas in a location that was easily expandable—we’re now looking into the land deals associated with Sunset Station because the move from NLV was completely unnecessary.

They’re also spending more than 1.5 million per bus on the new ACE buses to launch next month.

1.5 million per bus is obscene by any measure. They’re not even green or can ever run on compressed natural gas! Training on the new buses has been going on for several months and drivers report the inability to judge the right front of the bus when pulling into a stop and superfluous fiberglass wheel covers are being removed to help them because they have done so much damage to the new buses and to bus stops.

A retro-fit to change each bus door to be motion sensitive is also required now and will cost in excess of 50 million dollars because once the doors start closing and if they’re in the way, passengers are going to be seriously injured by them, especially on the Strip’s ‘Gold Line’.

The decisions to go forward with Sunset Station and the ACE buses occurred several years ago when Las Vegas was still hot in growth, but the funding mechanism is based on sales taxes more than gas taxes and now the RTC is in serious trouble because of these poor decisions.

Two recent monstrous fare hikes in a row with another ‘secret rate hike’ in the works, was supposed to soften the blow to passengers, but it’s only made them angrier especially given that CAT does next to nothing to notify its passengers via bus placards that public meetings are happening, and when they do happen, they are usually scheduled when working people who use the system cannot attend them.

The spectacular failure of the Las Vegas Boulevard north MAX bus, which is similar to the ACE, should have given everyone pause.  No one uses that bus route and prefers to stay on the 113 North line instead.  They are so ill-prepared and incompetent at the RTC & CAT that they can’t even figure out that if they extend one or both lines to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway’s business park just a mile or so north of the current terminus, that federal law would fully allow for CAT to resume its once very popular express buses for NASCAR week and other events there.

This is also the same system that can’t figure out how to connect Centennial, Summerlin and Southern Hills hospitals in the Rampart/Ft Apache corridor despite there being no north/south options for over six miles west past Rainbow Boulevard!

Only now with the bus rapid transit designation by USDOT will they bring the crowded Sahara route to Red Rock Station, but they steadfastly refuse to bring the Lake Mead, Spring Mountain, and Desert Inn routes there too to join the Charleston route in a big west valley transit hub at Red Rock Station.  The same holds true in the east valley.

Grade level bus rapid transit is not a success anywhere but in limited runs with entirely dedicated lanes like in Miami because it doesn’t solve the biggest transit problem; street level gridlock traffic! But, there was the RTC jumping on this new ACE failure even when the badly failed MAX proved passengers gained no value at all and refuse to ride it!

These people have no idea what they’re doing at the RTC; I would fire most, if not all of them.

Even on the Strip, the new ‘Gold Line’ will not have dedicated lanes exposing passengers to long delays and extreme danger in an emergency in such a crowded corridor.

The RTC and CAT are planning to spend millions touting their newest failure in the brand new ACE system.

Let’s all hope that when the terrible grade-level bus accident happens because of the exceptionally poor equipment purchase choices they’ve made does happen—and it will happen folks!—that no lives are lost.

In the interim, wear your asbestos suit and say a little prayer for yourselves before boarding!

Mike Zahara
02252010
www.WatchdogWag.com