“This is gambling at its most liberated—far more in-your-face than in Nevada.”
Green felt JOurnal {paGe 20}
News, politics, essays and high-class tips
By David G. Schwartz
February. 7-13, 2013
On the surface, transportation to Las Vegas seems to work well enough. Outside of getting tunneled on their way from McCarran International Airport to the Strip, tourists are able to get from point A to point B relatively smoothly. But the apparent seamlessness of what we might call the “transportationhospitality complex” masks its delicate nature. In other words,
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it doesn’t take much to throw the machine out of whack and put the Valley’s economy at risk. Take, for instance, the possibility of a taxi drivers’ strike. This isn’t just academic conjecture, since members of the Industrial Technical Professional Employees Union—which represents drivers at Yellow Checker Star Transportation, the secondlargest taxi operator in town—
[ Science ]
Ruvo centeR takeS nothing foR gRanted The 3-year-old Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health is again proving that a stand-alone nonprofit science outfit can thrive in Las Vegas. The center is part of a consortium that recently landed a major research award from the National Institutes of Health. The award could total $55 million over five years, starting with $11 million for 2013, according to the NIH’s division on aging. The money is going to the Alzheimer’s
recently authorized a strike. If drivers were to strike, and YCS didn’t field replacements, about one-quarter of the taxis in Las Vegas would be off the streets. This would lead to longer lines at the airport and casinos. While it wouldn’t break the system, it would certainly strain it. Taxis aren’t the transportation-hospitality complex’s only weak spot. Labor trouble with
union pilots, mechanics or flight attendants could ground flights, choking off the supply of visitors. When you’re turning over your visitor base two or three times a week, any disruption is serious. Labor strife isn’t the only thing that could grind things to a halt. An overturned tractortrailer on Interstate 15 can keep cars out. And after 9/11, when planes were grounded
Disease Cooperative Study consortium to fund four studies on the detection, prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s. The Ruvo Center’s portion will depend on its contributions to the studies. As one of 70 research institutions in the consortium, the center will participate in three of the four studies, including one that looks at the potential effects of exercise on cognition and the parts of the brain affected by Alzheimer’s. Another study could lead to prevention of the disease, says Ruvo Center director Jeffrey Cummings. It tests a new drug in people who appear outwardly normal, but whose brain scans show early signs of Alzheimer’s pa-
David G. Schwartz is the director of UNLV’s Center for Gaming Studies.
thology. Follow-up scans will determine whether the drug has any effect on their cognitive function. Cummings feels a sense of urgency about such treatments. “There are 5.5 million victims of Alzheimer’s in the U.S.,” he says. “If we don’t find a way to treat or prevent this disease, there will be 13 million by 2020, as the population ages and baby boomers move into their risk period.” The NIH grant and studies fall under a national plan to address Alzheimer’s outlined by U.S. Health and Human Services last year. The massive, coordinated effort is meant to find effective prevention and treatment by 2025. – Heidi Kyser
Illustration by Thomas Speak
Rethinking the TransportationHospitality Complex
nationwide, Las Vegas became a veritable ghost town. The city’s isolation makes it a good vacation spot, but also vulnerable: Unlike cities on the East Coast, we don’t have any passenger rail service to pick up the slack. All of which raises the question: Why doesn’t the system have more redundancy? Tourism is Las Vegas’ lifeblood, and if the tourists can’t get into town, or can’t get around once they’ve touched down, the economy will grind to a halt. That’s why it makes sense to look seriously—more seriously than ever before—at alternatives and redundancies in Las Vegas transport. A viable high-speed rail link to Southern California might be one, and taxi alternatives such as Uber Technologies—which hasn’t gotten off the ground in Las Vegas because of regulatory issues—is another. Extending the monorail to the airport and Downtown would ease the reliance on cabs to provide much of the touristtransportation infrastructure. This won’t be cheap, but it’s worth considering. Even mitigating one of the many choke points in the transportation-hospitality complex would, in the event of a crisis, be an economic life-saver. As we learned during the Great Recession, it’s not always a good idea to roll the dice and hope for the best, unless you’ve got a contingency for rolling snake eyes.