Bicycling To CES Easily Beats The CES Shuttle Buses In The Strip Corridor

 

CES the mega electronic product show has crashed into Las Vegas this week and I use my 1980s-era Raleigh road bike to reach the Las Vegas Convention Center to catch the packed aisles of razzle-dazzle devices and techy devices.

The traffic congestion around the Las Vegas and Venetian Expo convention centers is nasty and I pedal by all the stopped cars to my destination.

But today I tried something different because I'm also reporting from the Vegas Golden Knights-Columbus Blue Jackets game at T-Mobile Arena after CES. So instead of driving with my bicycle to a quiet side street about a mile or two from the convention centers and biking from there, I decided to park at T-Mobile Arena and take a CES shuttle bus.

Big mistake.

I could have biked from the arena to the convention center in less than 15 minutes.

But walking to the bus at the Aria, waiting for it to take off and then going two miles through road traffic took a total of at least 45 minutes.

And it was even worse on the way back.

During the long trip trip from the convention center to Aria, I sat next to a friendly exec guy from South Korea who lives in San Diego and works at a plastic resin factory in Tijuana.

We talked the whole time. The fella was friendly and he joked that he knew I would rather be on my bicycle.

He was right, 100 percent.

The sad thing is that it's hard to find bike racks at the convention center. The above photo is the one and only single bike rack next to the loading dock behind the $1 billion West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The new $600 million updated Las Vegas Convention Center has no bike racks in front. 

This pathetic awareness for the use of bicycle at the convention center buildings by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) reflects Las Vegas' low ranking as a bicycle city. People for Bikes, a national Colorado-based bicycle organization, ranked 2,901 U.S. cities for bicycle support and Las Vegas finished at the 29th percentile-- 2,073rd out of 2,901 cities.

The bike racks at the convention center are not proper bike racks, as well. Instead of a wavy design, the bike racks at the Las Vegas Convention Center should be single hoop-shaped or rectangle-shaped metal posts that allow a bicycle frame and wheel to be locked to the installed single-piece of metal.

There's only two venues on the Strip that has proper bicycle racks and it's T-Mobile Arena and Allegiant Stadium. Las Vegas Convention Center -- along with Las Vegas' airport and other hotels like Resorts World, Fontainebleau -- needs to install these types of bike racks. 

Allegiant Stadium also has hoop bike racks.

The fact is Las Vegas needs to improve its transportation options and not rely on a Tesla in a Tunnel approach to mass transit. 

And LVSportsBiz.com spelled out to the Clark County Commissioners what needs to be done to stop the road violence in Las Vegas.