It's likely that visitor-transportation time and costs aren't a priority factor for the planners of a new Las Vegas airport (in the works for Ivanpah Valley, 35 miles south of Las Vegas; see Question 6/18).
It's much more a matter of having an aiport that can efficiently handle the tens of millions of visitors, over and above today's counts, envisioned for Las Vegas' future. McCarran, seventh busiest airport in the country, is already maxed out. And because it's so close to the city, it can't grow too much larger.
Plenty of airports are some distance from their cities; New York and London are prime examples. It's especially time-consuming and expensive to travel from New York's giant JFK International out in Far Rockaway on Long Island to downtown Manhattan.
However, some visionaries are tackling the southern Nevada situation. Plans for a super-high-speed maglev train (which rides atop a magnetic cushion a fraction of an inch above the elevated track, reducing friction and achieving speeds of upwards of 200 mph) have been in the works for years.
Forward-thinkers on the non-profit California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission envison a maglev between Las Vegas and Anaheim, which would take a mere 85 minutes. From Las Vegas to Primm, Nevada (40 miles), the maglev would take 12 minutes. The perfect first stop along a southern California maglev line would be the airport near Jean. You could get on the train at the airport and be at a station at, say, the south end of the Strip in less than 10 minutes.
It could happen.
