Local Transportation (Sometimes it doesn’t Beat Walking)

Of course, if you are one of the millions that choose to drive to Las Vegas you have transportation, unless you partake of all that free booze and then leave it parked and find some other means. Walking is probably the best way to get around on the strip and often faster than an automobile in the traffic that jams the strip. Taxis, buses, the monorail and rental cars provide the vacationer with local transportation. Las Vegas municipal buses, The CAT-Citizen Area Transit, run the strip every fifteen minutes and although the buses are often crowed it is a great economical way to move about the city. The city owned and operated buses travel throughout the Vegas Valley including stops at McCarran Airport. The ever popular Las Vegas strip buses stop at all the hotels as well as the downtown transfer terminal on an approximate fifteen minute schedule.

A rental car is always a good idea for a longer stay and for those that want to visit some of the attractions located outside the Las Vegas Valley. An easy drive will take you to Boulder Dam, Scotty’s Castle at Death Valley, Mount Charleston, Redrock, Area 51, Lake Mead National Recreational Area, Zion National Park and the Valley of Fire. Los Angeles and Disneyland are a short 5 hour drive from Vegas and the Grand Canyon offers tourist a scenic drive through the cool, high mountains of Arizona. The Grand Canyon can also be visited via helicopter day trips and local airlines that operate small turboprop aircraft with large windows for a panoramic view of this amazing landmark. Most of the aircraft tour operators offer shuttle service from your strip hotel and some of the helicopters operate directly from the strip. You can also tour the city, Lake Mead and Boulder dam via helicopter tours.

The more adventurous may want to rent small motorbikes although we certainly don’t recommend it and consider them dangerous, especially when mixed with the heavy pedestrian and auto traffic. Some of the strip vendors rent bicycles and if you are up to it they offer some mobility but the crowds make them not much faster than walking and more dangerous. Moving between the strip hotels and the Convention Center recently became much easier with the opening of the monorail. The modern high speed trains operate on a fifteen minute schedule from the MGM Mirage on the south end of the strip to the Sahara Hotel on the north. The fares to ride the tram are three dollars per person. Note that the system shuts down at midnight although the system operators have said they are going to extend the hours, hopefully to 24/7 since Vegas is a 24/7 city.