I’ve done really well in the past few months to avoid bitch sessions, but I can’t stop myself today. The following message is for any city leader planning a big event, anywhere, but especially Las Vegas. My gripe involves planning for the event, thinking through the transportation issues and making it a little less inconvenient for the folks who actually work and live in your downtown area.

For instance, if you plan a major sporting event that requires closing down most of the streets downtown (Las Vegas Grand Prix) work extra hard to ensure the streets still open to traffic don’t get scheduled for a repaving that same week. When you take five major streets out of your transportation grid, you need to make sure the other streets can be navigated. Looking down on the situation for the 17th floor of the Regional Justice Center, it seems apparent that Fremont Street could have been used for cars this week rather than being scheduled for a new coat of asphalt.

Of course, a forward thinking transportation plan would have included alternatives, such as buses or car pools, but I understand we are talking about car-centric Las Vegas. By the way, it did help to plan the Grand Prix around spring break, but that only kept half as many cars stranded up on the I-95, sitting like ducks in 70-mph rush hour traffic, than usual. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a major pileup, but there is still another day of commuter traffic to go, so perhaps a dramatic Hollywood-style traffic snarl can still be expected.

Communication also is very important, as is sticking to the schedule outlined in your communication plan. When you say a road will be closed at 7pm don’t shut it down at 2pm prior to rush hour. Surprises like that one can snarl even the best laid plans, especially if a commuter finds his car trapped behind a barricade.

Now everyone is working hard to make this Grand Prix a success; it’s going to be an exciting race and I’m looking forward to it. But I think this little experiment clearly shows why Las Vegas doesn’t need a major arena downtown. There just isn’t anyway all those cars will be able to get to the arena for a three-four hour basketball game and then out and home again. There are only two exit ramps to downtown from the southbound I-95 and people coming from the north are likely not going to think ahead to exit onto I-15 and then double-back to a downtown arena.

Maybe by the time a new arena is built the monorail will extend to downtown and people will use it to arrive at the arena and everything will be great. (Deep sigh.) Right.