While the word on the street used to be that in order to ride the bus in Las Vegas, you needed to be either desperate, foolhardy, or worse, a lot of money has been invested in the the Regional Transit system over the past decade-or-so, including: the addition--and then extension off-Strip--of the double-decker Deuce service; the new Express Routes on Sahara Avenue and Boulder Highway, about to be echoed with a similar upgrade for Flamingo Road; the addition of new bus stations and transit centers, and more. The current reader has ridden the bus on very infrequent occasions, mainly at night, and has found the drivers to be extremely helpful while the "worst" behavior I've observed personally was a little rowdiness from a boisterous but good-humored group of youths who wreaked of weed and laughed a lot.
When it comes to the safety of passengers on Las Vegas buses, it might come as a surprise to learn that the biggest dangers we're aware of seem to arise not from violent behavior on the vehicles, but rather occur either while at a bus stop waiting to board, or else from bus-involved crashes. Disturbingly, there have been several instances of the first type of accident over the past several years, some resulting tragically in fatalities, when out-of-control vehicles have ploughed into groups of people waiting at bus stops. Similarly, only last week there was a bad morning-rush hour accident involving a school bus and a moped rider; you can visit caraccidentinlasvegas.com for information regarding previous recent incidents, a few of them involving fatalities, in which a Las Vegas school or transit bus was involved.
When it comes to violence on the buses, it's actually drivers who tend to be the ones most at risk: In the past six months alone, there have been no less than 50 assaults on RTC bus drivers, spurring the commission to consider an additional $4 million investment to modify its 400-bus fleet to add safety enclosures and to hire more security officers to protect staff from attacks. It's a recommendation that's due to come before the RTC's board of directors next month, in the face of bus drivers experiencing everything from abusive language to spitting to physical confrontations. Currently, there is only available funding to finance enough security personnel to ride buses on 10 percent of routes, with only a dozen officers per shift, approximately, on 345 buses servicing 39 routes.
With more security, incidents like the one that took place on the morning of July 8, 2008, would probably be a thing of the past. It was at around 7:30 a.m., in the vicinity of the Washington Avenue and Lamb Boulevard intersection in the north, when a naked man who had first stolen some beer from a nearby 7-Eleven proceeded to successfully fight his way onto a CAT paratransit vehicle, which he then took control of (sort of). The bus driver bailed for his own safety, apparently, as did the perpetrator a few hundred yard later, leaving the still-in-motion vehicle driverless. Somehow a heroic Metro officer, in Las Vegas' version of Speed, managed to board and stop the vehicle. The naked bus hijacker was apprehended and booked into Clark County Detention Center on charges of Grand Larceny Auto and Robbery. No one was hurt.
Such incidents are rare, however, even in crazy Las Vegas, and we have plenty of readers who swear by our bus-transit system, as you can read in the results to a Reader Poll we ran not so long ago regarding how and where people feel safe, or otherwise, in Sin City. As always, we'd simply urge the use of common sense and attentiveness to your surroundings; while this city has some distinctly dubious neighborhoods, these are not on the tourist map and provided you figure out your route in advance (drivers are usually helpful if you're not sure), then you shouldn't find yourself anywhere risky.
