By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
Buoyed by a solid debut of fan-ferrying buses to the Raiders’ first preseason game at Allegiant Stadium Saturday, RTC’s Raiders game-day buses will be rolling for the nine regular season home games that begin with a Raiders vs Baltimore Ravens Monday Night Football game on Sept. 13.
The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada is paying $152,000 to run the bus service from five locations around the Las Vegas valley for the Raiders season. RTC is deploying 30 buses to serve fans in every part of the valley. For Saturday game, RTC counted 6,500 one-way trips — or 3,250 roundtrips. The RTC Deuce double-decker bus that serves the Strip chipped in with at least another 200 trips, probably more, said Francis Julien, RTC deputy chief executive officer.
RTC figured the Raiders game bus service removed at least 1,600 cars from the roads around the stadium, which opened to big crowds for the first time in July. There were many complaints about traffic problems on local roads around the domed, 65,000-seat venue on the west side of I-15 across from Mandalay Bay
The transportation agency asked the Raiders for their season ticket holders’ zip codes to plot the game plan and figure out the bus locations around the valley, said M.J. Maynard, RTC CEO. Interestingly enough, they mirrored the zip codes of the Vegas Golden Knights season ticket holders. RTC also has VGK game-day bus service to T-Mobile Arena, which is closer to the Strip than Allegiant Stadium.
The two most popular routes of the five came from Red Red Resort in Summerlin and the Green Valley Ranch Resort in Henderson.
The next two popular routes came from the M Resort and Santa Fe Station.
The Boulder Station route had the smallest number of Raiders game bus riders.
The biggest change will be RTC collecting the $4 roundtrip fare at the five satellite bus sites for the ride to the stadium instead of trying to collect two bucks there and another $2 at the stadium for the trip home. Fans can also pay the $4 roundtrip fare through an RTC app ahead of time.
The drop-off point at the stadium is along Dean Martin Drive on the stadium’s east side. It’s only a two-minute walk for the fans. Most of the fans grabbed a bus for the trip home during the first 45 minutes after the game, Julien said. Generally speaking, all the bus riders were done boarding the buses 90 minutes after the game ended, he said.
RTC will beef up signage at the stadium to better point fans to their respective bus routes for the trip home, Maynard said.
She expected that 80 percent-90 percent of the 30 Raiders game buses will be double-deckers. The buses carried about 50-90 fans to and from the game.
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