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(Disclosure: LVSportsBiz.com publisher Alan Snel paused his newspaper reporting career in early 2006 to start a bicycle store coalition in the Tampa Bay market to work on road safety and bicycle awareness issues and worked 6 1/2 years on making road safety a public policy issue before moving to Las Vegas in late 2012 to work at the Review-Journal newspaper. After four Clark County students were killed by motorists while they walked/bicycled to and from school in the past year, Snel decided to use LVSportsBiz.com to report more on road safety and bicyclist/pedestrian infrastructure issues.)
Story by Alan Snel Photos by Hugh Byrne
LAS VEGAS Nevada — Like just about all quality-of-life issues in metro Las Vegas from education and arts to health care and public transit, Las Vegas is playing catch up to other peer markets when it comes to building safer roads for bicyclists and pedestrians.
But there are bicyclist safety victories scattered around metro Vegas, from a much-improved Fort Apache Road in the southwest valley with wide bike lanes to construction launch of a Red Rock Legacy Trail along the State Route 159 corridor and even to downtown’s Arts District Saturday morning where a new bicycle safety mural was unveiled on the side of a building between Main Street and California Avenue just a block or two from busy Charleston Avenue.
The Southern Nevada Bicycle Coalition worked hard on the arts project and the unveiling mural event, with the artwork declaring the bike coalition’s message, “Let’s Get There Together.”
It’s a serious message when you’re talking out a Las Vegas area that saw four Clark County School District students killed while walking or biking to/from their schools in the past year and other horrific tragedies involving bicyclists from the north area where a retired police chief was killed while bicycling by two teens in a car in Aug. 2023 to five bicyclists killed by a truck driver with meth in his system south of Boulder City in Clark County in Dec. 2020.
Local artist Eric Vozzola designed the mural, “From the Rocks to the Road,” with elected officials like Clark County Commissioner Justin Jones and Las Vegas City Councilwoman Olivia Diaz on hand with bike coalition leaders, Jennifer Grube, the SNBC president, and Angela Ahmet, the coalition’s vice president.
A local transportation official Andrew Kjellman, deputy chief executive office of the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada, cited the Las Vegas area’s wide roads, where fast-moving motorists travel on corridors with limited bicyclist safety features. Clark County is building a protected bike lane on Starr Avenue between Las Vegas Boulevard and Bermuda Road, while the city of Las Vegas is planning its first protected bike lane in downtown.
Las Vegas has a ways to go. The national bicycle organization, People For Bikes, ranked 2,901 cities for their bicycle networks and ranked Las Vegas 2,073rd — good for a 29th percentile mark.
On a recent 50-mile bike ride, LVSportsBiz.com documented the area’s wide roads that function like local highways with traffic lights and the drivers who fail to pass a bicyclist by a required minimum three feet.
County Commissioner Jones, one of the Las Vegas area’s biggest proponents for safe roads for bicyclists, cited several road improvement projects that should help bicyclists get to their destinations without getting struck by drivers.
For example, there are tunnels planned for three 215 trail crossings where bicyclists have to watch out for turning drivers at the at-grade crossings where motorists are turning on to and coming off the 215 beltway.