It's easy to be struck by the contrast of the glitzy over-the-top Strip/Las Vegas' boring, sprawling suburbs and the stunningly beautiful Red Rock Canyon where a single two-land road called Nevada State Route 159 offers a front row seat to gaze at the calico-and-crimson-colored rugged foothills of the Spring Mountains.
The average town in the U.S/. would build a paved trail through this delightful visual corridor for bicyclists and walkers for safety purposes.
But this is Las Vegas and Clark County, where local government vision and planning are low, the bar is low and the standards of amenities and services are low.
There is a plan to build a 19-mile paved trail along the SR 159 corridor and there were nice groundbreaking and ribbon-cutting ceremonies in 2025 and 2026 to celebrate the start of this badly-needed trail project that is needed for safety purposes because of the speeding motorists, mammoth trailer trucks and daredevil motorcyclists who threaten the safety of bicyclists who are brave enough to follow a road shoulder from the Summerlin side or the state route 160 side.
But the vast majority of the first phase of the "bicycle trail" work was actually for cars when the trail opened with a feeble length of ,99 of a mile. The first phase included a parking lot for 76 cars at the start at the Sky Vista Dr. traffic light; another parking lot for cars to see the Red Rock Canyon welcome sign; and right turn "deceleration" lanes off SR 159 onto the welcome sign parking lot, Calico Basin Rd and the BLM-managed Red Rock Scenic Drive.
A startling high number of two million people visit Red Rock -- more than what the new MLB A's baseball stadium will hold if every one of the 81 home games are sold out in 2028 when the stdium opens on the Strip..
The publicly-funded government tourism agency called the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) could create amazing tourism income if it promoted Red Rock Canyon's natural splendor like it did the Strip. But the public LVCVA functions as the marketing and PR arm of the private hotel corporations on the Strip, so no worries about the LVCVA making Red Rock Canyon too popular with visitors.
Clark County Commissioner Justin Jones, who is an avid bicyclist who does triathalons, deserves so much credit for pushing the Red Rock Legacy Trail to its starting line. I assume he must be bummed that the trail itself measures a puny .99 of a mile in the first phase.
A sign at the end of the .99 of a mile paved trail says the trail will be expanded in 2027.
There is a new county commissioner elected to fill the seat of Justin Jones, who did not run for re-election in November. Her name is Minja Yan, a pro-transportation candidate who I am counting on to get the rest of this trail built for safety purposes.
On Sunday I decided to bike along the shoulders of SR 159 through Red Rock Canyon to see what it's like to ride a bicycle on a gorgeous sunny weather day. The scenery was inspiring, but what I witnessed was the usual speeding motorcyclists and motorists who pulled idiotic stunts like making U-turns in the middle of the road when they missed turns along SR 159. (It was Sunday so no rumbling tractor-trailers buzzing bicyclists.)
I did not see any state police troopers patrolling this corridor. And the state Department of Transportation has done no improvements to the State Route 159 corridor after the Nevada DOT held community meetings to draw suggestions from residents.
Most major league cities would showcase the Red Rock Canyon corridor and make sure paved trails were built to improve safety for bicyclists and walkers. Not Las Vegas. There would be state police patrolling the corridor and road improvements to make this busy road safer because now SR 159 has become a commuter link between Pahrump and Las Vegas. No, not Nevada.
This is why Las Vegas and Nevada score at the bottom of the barrel of quality-of-life rankings.
Man, if only those billions of dollars rolling into Las Vegas thanks to all those sports events and stadiums were put to good use by improving our local roads and making our roads safer.
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